"Grandma, please tell me about Grandfather Henry's sickness long ago?"
"Yes, dear; bring me a pillow and my knitting and I'll tell you all
about it, just as my mother told me.
"You must remember, in those days
there were few doctors and nurses. Towns were far apart. Because transportation
was not very good they lived near rivers and bodies of water. Father and mother
lived on a farm near Peru, the very place where I was born. It was along the
Illinois river. Every spring the farm was almost overflowed with water because
of the heavy rains they had. Then in August, the month when almost all the water
had dried off during a hot season, sickness began. Mother said when the resin
weed or yellow flower appeared it was time to look out for the ague and
biliousness.
"A kind Irish lady, Nurse Marie, as they called her, would
go from one home to another, leaving a kind and cheering word and a bit of
gruel, water and a bottle or box of medicine at each bedside. Yes, that same
kind lady called on your great-grandfather when he was sick. Oh, those were the
days when your neighbors meant something.
"When the cold winter came
along most of the sick were well. The men started to work again although they
couldn't work in the field they did many other useful things.
"The dates
of the dry season were in 1835 and 1838. In the first dates told you, the people
were not so very sick but later they were very sick. A correspondent of the
eastern paper said he had seen over three hundred graves in the La Salle
cemetery that had never been rained on.
"In the spring it was a very
healthy country. The men started to till the soil again and the women worked
very hard in the house.
"One day when my mother wasn't feeling very well
a kind old lady came over to see her. While they were paring apples the lady
said, 'This is the most God-forsaken country under the sun. It is only fit for
the Indians, prairie dogs, rattle snakes and they have almost got possession
now. I wish it were sunk!' She then stopped for a moment, then she said, 'But
that isn't much of a wish, for it wouldn't have to go down over fifteen inches
before it was all under water.'
"The winter of 1838 was very cold,
having before been a dry summer and almost all the time low water. They could
not use water for mills or commerce because there wasn't enough. But they used
boiled wheat, hulled corn which was called pound cake, made by pounding corn in
a mortar. A common way they ground corn was by making the corn brittle and then
grinding it with a coffee grinder.
"They would have to do this both
morning and night to satisfy their good appetites.
"That is all I can
remember now."
"Thank you, grandmother. I will now write it for my theme
in the final examination for language."
Extracted 08 Nov 2018 by Norma Hass from Stories of Pioneer Days in La Salle County, Illinois, by Grammar Grade Pupils, published in 1932, page 70.
| Lee | DeKalb | Kane |
| Bureau |
 |
Kendall |
| Putnam | Grundy | |
| Marshall | Woodford | Livingston |
