After a few years we had a school at Wood Lake, which is down Lyndale avenue two or three miles. Mrs. Mary Pribble--1854. My father, Hiram Smith arrived in Minnesota Apr. 21, 1854 settling first in Brooklyn, Hennepin County. My mother followed in July of the same year, with the family of three children, myself, aged seven, and two brothers aged two and five years. We arrived in St. Paul July ninth and my mother, with her usual forethought and thrift, (realizing that before long navigation would close for the winter and shut off all source of supplies) laid in a supply of provisions while we were in St. Paul. Among other things she bought a bag of rice flour which was all the flour in our colony until April of the next year. We came by stage to Anoka and were to cross the Mississippi river in a canoe, to the trading post of Mr. Miles, which was on a high point of land in what is now Champlin. It was where Elm creek empties into the Mississippi. But the canoe was too small to carry us all at once and so I was left on the east shore sitting upon our baggage, to wait for a return trip. When I finally arrived across the river, there were Indians gathered at the landing and they touched me on the cheek and called me "heap pale face." There was great joy in our little colony when that same autumn my father discovered a fine cranberry marsh. Much picnicking and picking followed. My parents secured seven bushel and alloted very much on the winter supplies that these cranberries would buy when they could send them to St. Paul, our only market. Soon one of the neighbors prepared to set out on a trip by ox-team to St. Paul. The only road at that time was by the Indian trail, which for several miles was where the county road now leads from Robbinsdale to Champlin. Then to the ferry at St. Anthony Falls, and so on down the east side of the river to St. Paul. My mother had made out a careful list of the real necessities to be purchased, putting them in the order of the need for them, in case he would not be able to buy them all. She knew very well that there would be no possible way to purchase any new clothing all winter and so the first items on the list were: new cloth for patches and thread to sew them with. This latter came in "hanks" then, instead of on spools. After that came the list of provisions, as seven bushels of cranberries were expected to buy a great many supplies. How well I remember the joy upon my mother's face, when those precious cranberries were loaded on the neighbor's already full wagon and the oxen slowly disappeared down the old trail! It was a long tedious journey to be made in that way, and they had many days to wait before they would receive the fruits of that wonderful wagon load.