Her life had been an extremely hard one, but she had borne up bravely under poverty and privation, supplying with her own teaching the education that the frontier schools could not give her children, and by her Christian example setting them all on a straight road through life.
Border ruffians killed her husband, almost within sight of her home.
She passed months in terror and distress and, until I became old enough to provide for her, often suffered from direst poverty.

Yet she never complained for herself; her only thoughts being for her children and the sufferings that were visited upon them because of their necessary upbringing in a rough and wild country.
My sister Julia was now married to Al Goodman, a fine and capable young man, and I was free to follow the promptings of an adventurous nature and go where my companions were fighting.

In January, 1864, the Seventh Kansas Volunteers came to Leavenworth from the South, where they had been fighting since the early years of the war.

Among them I found many of my old friends and schoolmates.

I was no longer under promise not to take part in the war and I enlisted as a private.
In March of that year the regiment was embarked on steamboats and sent to Memphis, Tennessee, where we joined the command of General A.J.
Smith.