"During the fall of that year (1855) some parties I had formerly known came back on a visit from Central, Iowa, and talking with them about the opportunities in the great West satisfied me that it was the best place for the family to go. I therefore made my arrangements and the 26th of December, 1855, left my native state with about enough money to pay my fare to Monroe, Iowa, where I arrived on New Year's morning, 1856, coming by stage from Burlington, Iowa.

This was a hard trip and rough introduction to frontier life to me, but I had hope of a better future and a companion, John Smith, who was always cheerful and with his encouragement I kept up a brave appearance, at least.

When we arrived at Monroe, Iowa, there was deep snow on the ground. The weather was bitter cold and I started out to find my old friends. Was told when I found them that no work could be had until spring and, with only money enough to pay about one week's board, this looked discouraging enough.

Smith and I were stopping at the hotel that kept the stage drivers and their horses. Besides, numerous freighting teams hauling from the Mississippi River to Des Moines and intermediate points, made this place quite an important hotel stand.

Soon after our arrival a traveler driving a single horse stopped for the night. His horse was taken sick and Smith, having had a great deal of experience with horses, offered his services to treat the sick animal, which he succeeded in curing the next day and received five dollars for the job, of which I shared. I mention this circumstance to show the first money I ever had an interest in earning west of the Mississippi River.

The next job we undertook was digging a cellar under part of the hotel for ten dollars and board. About the first of February, I hired for three months to drive a team at ten dollars per month and had a hard experience.

JOINS SURVEYING CREW
During April, my father came from Ohio by way of Iowa City, where he met an acquaintance from New York by the name of Charles Lamb. Mr. Lamb had a team of horses and wagon and was going to Council Bluffs. Father and I came with him. After a few days in the city of Council Bluffs, we hired out to a Mr. Everett for a surveying trip in Nebraska, he having a contract for ten townships of government land, commencing a few miles west of Omaha and running west across the Platte River, to subdivide into sections.

The lot of carrying chain was assigned to myself and father and when we started out from Omaha with our wagon loaded with provisions and drawn by one team of oxen, it seemed a dangerous trip to me, on account of the Indians. The Pawnees were then living on the south side of the Platte River, a few miles below where the thriving city of Fremont is now built.

This work was very hard on my father, who was in poor health, and I did all in my power to lighten his burden. It was a very wet season and in the rank growth of vegetation, there were myriads of mosquitoes, which made it almost impossible to get any rest at night, except by keeping a dense smoke to drive them away, and many nights, I sat up nearly all night, keeping a fire and smoke to drive away the varmints that the others might sleep.

I hardly understand now how I endured such loss of sleep and hard work through the day, as it lasted from sunrise until dark, yet I seemed to enjoy it at that time.

Just about the time we were through with the surveying, mother came to Council Bluffs with the other four children, John W. Beckman, a dear friend of the family, coming with her from Ohio. While here he secured for me a situation as clerk in a dry goods store at Florence, at a salary of fifty dollars per month, where I went to work as soon as I had been to Council Bluffs to see my dear mother and brothers and sisters. This position I held until the spring of 1857.

FATHER MEETS TRAGIC DEATH
In the fall of 1856, father built a two room house in the timber near Omaha, where he superintended the cutting of logs and wood until spring. In March, 1857, he went out on the prairie northwest of Omaha about ten or twelve miles with three other men to take up claims on some land. They were detained longer than expected, having left the team at McArdles and in returning, they became separated. Father got lost and perished before morning. His body was found about nine o'clock on the next morning, March 12, 1857. What was the feeling of the wife and mother when his body was brought home to her, cold in death, among a community of strangers with no relative within a week's journey, would be powerless to describe.

How utterly lonely we all felt. But we found numerous warm friends among the residents of Omaha, chief of whom was Doctor George L. Miller, whose kindness in that trying ordeal will always be remembered with gratitude.

It seemed necessary after this that I must earn more than a monthly salary and I soon formed a partnership with a man named Steel to engage in the land business, locating claims for land-seekers. This partnership, I think, continued for about six months, and I had made enough to build a comfortable house in Florence where I moved mother with the children in the Fall of 1857.

About this time, the panic of that year seemed to have reached the Missouri River and business that had been flourishing in all branches up to this time was utterly demoralized.

I went to work chopping wood in the timber north of Florence and Brother Frank hauled it to market with the ox team we had during this fall.

MEETS FUTURE WIFE
Miss Nellie Arnold arrived in Florence and I became acquainted with her soon after her arrival. The first time I met her was at a card party, when I was completely captivated. Thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever met. Little did I think then that I would have the pleasure of calling her wife, but fate seemed to favor me, although she had many admirers who, it seemed to me, were my superiors intellectually.

In the spring of 1858, mother, Luther and the two girls went back to Ohio to settle up some business and brother Frank, Al Arnold, Franer Van Zandt, George Duncan, myself and Miss Arnold moved to Cleveland, which was a town that had been laid out two miles west of Columbus, on the banks of the Loup River.

We lived in a building erected for a hotel by the company that laid out the town. We took with us to Cleveland seven yoke of cattle with plows for breaking prairie. Brother Frank and Van Zandt broke prairie until the first of July on claims taken up by members of our little colony.

RUN FERRY ACROSS LOUP
Arnold ran a sawmill for John Rickly, in Columbus. Franer and myself ran the ferry across the Loup River, taking immigrants across, bound for California and Utah the early part of the season, but later in the fall, news came to Omaha of rich discoveries of gold in the Rocky Mountains near Pike's Peak, which started a great many people for the new Eldorado, even though late in the season, with a trip of five hundred miles before them over a barren prairie and no shelter or food at their destination except such as they were able to carry with them.

Thus was the first settlement made at the base of the Rocky Mountains, on the spot where the city of Denver now stands as the capital of what, in my mind, is destined to be one of the wealthiest states in this Union.

During the winter of 1858-59, some irregular communication was kept up with the few settlers who had gone out there in the fall.

This winter was an extremely hard one for all settlers in Nebraska. Very little had been raised the summer before except corn, and no hogs were in the county and very few cattle. As a consequence, most of the people had nothing for food but corn. We had, however, raised ten acres of buckwheat, which gave an enormous yield. We threshed it on the frozen ground with flails and, as the Mormons who had settled at Genoa had a mill for grinding corn, we took some of the buckwheat up there and had it ground without bolting, then sifted it through a wire sieve, and lived principally on buckwheat cakes and potatoes during the winter, with a portion of the time some venison killed by Arnold.

HAUL CORN TO KEARNEY
Frank went in December with two other men to Elm Creek to poison wolves for the hides. He had raised about six hundred bushels of corn from sod planting, some of it having good quality. The Overland Stage Company, having a line established from Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Salt Lake City, sent an agent to Columbus to buy corn to be delivered at Kearney. We contracted to take them what we could haul and deliver on the north bank of the Platte River, at one dollar per bushel.

The corn had to be shelled by hand, which took several days. Van Zandt and I took two teams of three yoke oxen to the wagon on which we loaded about one hundred bushels. Franer had a team belonging to the estate of a man named Kelly on which he took a load. Pat Murray and Adam Smith each took a load and early in January, we started.

The weather was very cold but little snow on the ground until the day we arrived on the bank of the Platte River opposite old Fort Kearney, where we camped by some hay stacks. It snowed all day and at night, the wind came from the northwest in a regular blizzard. We chained the oxen to the wagons and took our bedding across to the Island, where, from the protection of a grove of cedar trees, we managed by keeping up a big fire with dry logs to keep from freezing to death.

The next morning was bitter cold and we were compelled to go across the river to get sacks for the corn. In going over, I broke through the ice where it was covered with snow and got wet nearly to my arms. We then had over a mile to go to reach a house and my clothes froze stiff on me as soon as I got out of the river, which made it very tedious and slow to get along. I, however, managed to get to the stage station where I dried my clothes as best I could, then went back to the north side where the teams were left and delivered the corn, getting our pay in gold.

Click HERE for Part 2 of the Unfinished Memoirs Of James E. North