When we were home we told our parents all the incidents of the day. We had had a good time and had enjoyed ourselves very much. Then I attended to hard work and farming, and think it would have been difficult to find a man, who would have performed more labor than I did until I was past twenty-two years old. In the mean time, I was having an eye out and thinking of domestic affairs and life. I will not tell what old folks would call it, but I call it falling in love with Miss Traviss. I made a private bargain with her and got the consent of her father and mother, which was a hard job for me although they acquiesced willingly. It was also approved by my parents. We had it ratified by a minister and afterward I heard her called, by others, Mrs. William Nowlin. She had taken a new name upon herself. I left my father's home to build up one for myself and another, and never more to return to my father's house and call it my home. CHAPTER XXVI. HOW I COMMENCED FOR MYSELF--FATHER'S OLD FARM IN 1843. When I commenced for myself, father gave me a strip across the two lots on the south end of his farm, south of the Ecorse, containing forty-two acres and lying on the town line between Dearborn and Taylor. Thus fulfilling (as far as I was concerned) what he had said long before; he wanted land for his children. I supposed, at the time, I should build a house, live there and make it my home. I had a chance to trade it off even, for eighty acres of land lying half a mile west of it, subject to a mortgage of one hundred and fifty dollars. I made the trade, paid the mortgage and afterward built on the place, the house in which I now live. Father bought back the forty-two acres which he had given me, and he easily paid for it--two hundred and fifty dollars. Then he had the old farm together again, with money left, which he had saved by his frugality and industry. He made up his mind that he would buy another place, which was offered for sale, out one mile toward Dearbornville, beyond the clay road. It had a good barn on it and a comfortable farm house. He moved there in 1848 and lived on one of the most beautiful building places in the town of Dearborn and on the corner where three roads met. About this time, my second sister became acquainted with a young man, by the name of Michael Nowlin, and married him. She was more lucky than most young ladies; she did not have to change her name, only from Miss to Mrs. Nowlin. She went with her husband to live near Romeo, Macomb County, Michigan. He was a farmer there. Father did not like to have one of his children so far away. I told him it would be well for him to let my brother-in-law and sister have ninety acres of the old farm, which would make them a good home. So he offered it to them, and they came and settled on it, and lived where I had lived so long before, with my father and mother, brother and sisters, in the woods of Michigan.