In such times of religious excitement it was not necessary for a man to have a college education, to become an acceptable preacher. But father saw the advantages of a good education, and resolved to attend A. Campbell's school, then known as Buffalo Academy, but which was soon changed to Bethany College. But the means to acquire an education must be obtained by his own exertions. About the year 1839 grandfather sold his place in Wadsworth, and moved to the Sandusky Plains, a level, marshy prairie, in northwestern Ohio. Part of the Plains belonged to the Wyandotte Indian Reservation, and was opened to settlement, a few years afterward, by the removal of the Indians to Wyandotte, Kansas. Father and grandfather made sheep-raising their business while there. Father herded sheep in summer and taught school in winter. And, while herding sheep, he finished committing the New Testament to memory. He could repeat it from beginning to end, and even in his later years he remembered it so well that he could repeat whole chapters at once. I never saw the time that any one could repeat a verse in the New Testament to him, but that he could tell the book, and nearly always the chapter in which it was found. He and his father's family put their membership into the church at Letimberville, some miles distant; and there he occasionally preached. He sometimes went back to Wadsworth, and on the way back and forth stopped and preached for the little church at Sullivan, Ashland Co. There he made the acquaintance of Sibjl S. Carleton, the daughter of Joseph Carleton, one of the leading members of the church. They were married August 17, 1843; and he never had cause to regret his choice, for she proved to him a helpmeet indeed. While living there, at the solicitation of his neighbors, he held a debate with a Universalist preacher, to the satisfaction of his friends and the discomfiture of his opponent. Many parts of the Plains were covered with water, and were musical with frogs in the spring, but in hot weather they dried up, leaving here and there a stagnant pond. I have heard father tell how one of his neighbors tried to break a field by beginning on the outside, and plowing farther in as the land dried up. But the snakes and frogs grew thicker and thicker, as he neared the center. At length the grass seemed almost alive with snakes, and his big ox-team became wild with fright, and ran away, and he could not get them back there again.