We came to Minnesota in 1855. We brought with us four yoke of oxen, thirty-five head of cattle and three hogs. We, with a family of three sons and a daughter, were four weeks on the way. We crossed the river on a ferry at Prairie du Chien and came up through Rochester and Cannon Falls and camped at Stanton while I went to a claim near Kenyon, that I had taken up the fall before, to find it had been jumped so I came on to Northfield and took up a claim on the Cannon River. We had with us two covered wagons--known as prairie schooners. In these we had our provisions, composed of flour, smoked meats and a barrel of crackers. We also had our furniture, chairs and chests and two rocking chairs for the mother and daughter. Here all of their leisure time, while on the move, was spent industriously applying their knitting needles, meanwhile singing to themselves to the accompaniment of the thud, thud of the oxen. Each day was opened with the family prayer, after which we had the morning meal and then the boys took turns starting on ahead with the pigs, this extra time being needed because of the pigs' obstinacy. One morning the boys found they had started back in the same direction from which they had come and had traveled six miles before they found it out. We purchased a barrel of crackers in Milwaukee and our noonday meal consisted of crackers and milk, and as milk soured, we fed it to the hogs. Butter was made on the way, and bread and biscuits were baked in a kettle. When we staked out our claim, we laid a floor and placed a tent over it where we lived till logs could be procured. These we got on the west side of the river, then government land. For shingles we drove to Trim Mill ten or twelve miles the other side of Prescott, Wis. At one time that summer two hundred Indians were camped near our farm for two days on their way to St. Paul. Mrs. Pauline Hagen. I was four years old when my parents settled in Hastings. Mother was obliged to return to Wisconsin to see about our goods which were delayed in coming, and father wintered here and took care of us three small children. Our house had no floor and very little furniture, and this hand-made, save for a small sheet iron stove through the cracks of which the fire could be plainly seen. At bed time father placed us in sacks, firmly tied around our little bodies, and put us on straw beds on the ground and then covered us with straw for warmth. We had no other covering. Our food that first winter consisted mostly of corn meal, made up, in a variety of ways. But mother on her arrival in the spring with our lost household goods, found her family fat and rugged and none the worse for the severe winter of '55-'56. Mrs. Catherine Meade.