"We Were Left In The Woods Alone" ~ Aunt Kate

Aunt Kate

Chapter 11

The winter was very rainy but not cold. As the long walk, four miles, was too much for Jim before and after a days work, we moved to the mine in February. There was a cabin, eight by sixteen feet wide by sixteen feet long on one side, which had belonged to the former owner. Jim replaced the windows which had been stolen, also put in a rough board ceiling, and I papered the black boards with clean newspapers. We had a nice heater and wood was to be had for the cost of picking it up, so we were warm and comfortable if one didn't ask too much. Of course we didn't intend to stay there very long. It was a sort of get-rich-quick proposition and we would soon be out and away.

My brother Dan was a partner in the mine with Jim, and they went right to work to take out a crushing. It wasn't long before they had ten or fifteen tons of quartz on the dump, all of which prospected well, and they were in good spirits. Poor boys, when the returns came back they received less than forty dollars on an expected two hundred fifty or more. Of course they said what most everyone says at such times, the gold was allowed to run off the plates, or the mill man helped himself. What a year that was, and the years that followed. 

They kept on summer and fall with no better results. In the fall sometime, a mine at Railroad had been bought by some capitalists and Jim and Dan got work there. Before going to work Dan moved his family, and we, my sister Anna Finette "Nettie" Pillsbury and I, and the children, were left in the woods alone. 

(to be continued)
Love,
Grammy T.