Recollections of A Busy Life

(Transcribed by Peggy Barriskill Perazzo, December 2005)

"Recollections of A Busy Life,"
By Eli Fayette Ruggles

H. L. Ruggles & Co., Publishers, (published circa 1904)

Chapter X.

Looking for a Wife.

I have not mentioned about anybody's sisters but my own, and yet I have
been looking out of one corner of an eye for some years past, with about
this result: One girl about two miles distant is good-looking and smart,
but has red hair; that won't do with my tendency in the same way. One
taught our school and I was school director, so I had a good chance there.
Beautiful eyes, black hair, witty, smart as a whip, but her neck was very
short, her forehead low, rather small. I'm afraid you are not a very
healthy girl. She married, later, had two children, died ten years after
that and was buried in Kansas. Another girl lived four miles distant, and
she and Mariah were great friends. She was decidedly pretty, rosy cheeks,
auburn hair, well educated, good singer, but her mother was slightly
insane. I'm crazy enough for one family, tain't safe. Another, a farmer
girl, perfectly healthy, black hair, but not refined, rather coarse, not
much talk - too much that way myself. A young lady late from York State,
tall, yes, a little bony, lightish hair, well educated, very lady-like, but
I said, "I guess you are most too nice for a farmer boy, and I guess you
would enjoy entertaining company better than to cook and sweep." Mother
gave me her opinion free, by saying, "If I was a young man I believe I
would as soon hug a basket of chips as that girl." That settled it. Yet
another girl middling tall, dark hair, good size and good form, apparently
healthy, good company; took her riding twice; maybe I'd get the mitten, for
another fellow is looking that way. I'll wait and see. Joining my farm is
another farm owned by a young widow. She had moved on the farm some four
years before with her husband. They had been married but a short time, and
this was their first housekeeping. He was consumptive, but worked at his
trade as carpenter. He failed fast, and they soon returned to Ohio, where
he died at his old home. Four years later she returned to her farm with her
mother and sister and two brothers. They were now our nearest neighbors.
She was medium size, black hair, good health, a fine singer, good
housekeep, played the melodeon, and that sounded so good, not only when any
of us called at the house, but when I was at my plowing or dragging or
cultivating, or in haying and harvest that melodeon could be heard in sweet
melody and that young widow singing - "Sitting by Thy Side, Mary, Mary Aleen."

Strange Freak In Nature.

One day father was sitting at the back part of the room and mother betwixt
him and the window, threading her needle. "Sylvia," said he, you are not as
handy at that work as you was years ago." "What do you mean, Joseph, you
can't see me, can you?" "You are trying to thread your needle, aren't you?
"Yes." "I saw the shadow as it were before the window, the moving of your
hands." And that was the first he had seen for fifteen years. Father had
mentioned during the past week that it wasn't so dark, that it seemed
lighter. Soon he could see us as shadows, moving around the room. Thinking
it might aid sight or help its return, he used kerosene oil, and soon it
was talked far and near that kerosene oil was restoring sight to father
Ruggles, as he was generally called then. Sight kept coming to one eye till
father could go where he wished to; read the papers, read his Bible and
took great delight in seeing again. But just as unlucky in his first loss
of sight after blindness he took cold that settled again in his eyes and he
was again a blind man.

The Oncoming Strife Between Freedom and Slavery.

You remember that I started that father had a ticket written containing his
anti-slavery principles - that when he handed out his ballot he said, "The
principles contained in that ballot will yet govern this nation." That was
the leaven hidden in the three measures of meal till all was leavened.
Bitterness was rife between the North and the South, between the free and
the slave states. It had been the law that a slave getting into a free
state became a free man, but the slave states having the majority in
congress passed a law that a slave fleeing to a free state was not free,
but men in pursuit could call on any man to help catch the fugitive, and if
he refused he could be fined and imprisoned. Then there was no freedom for
the slave till he reached Canada. This being made a bloodhound to catch
black men, and help get them in chains again, terribly enraged the whole
North, and they just wouldn't do it.

Men like Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner argued the rights of free men
and the wrongs of slavery till Sumner was felled to the senate floor by a
heavy cane in the hands of Mr. Brooks. Kansas has been having a bloody time
- Southerners determined that it should come into the Union a slave state
and Northern men just as determined it should be free. Many men were being
shot down on the border line in this terrible strife. Seven states had
declared themselves out of the Union, and had formed a Southern
Confederacy, and had chosen Jefferson Davis for their President, and other
states were going. Slavery was their chief corner-stone.

Well I do remember attending the Republican convention at the wigwam in
Chicago when Abraham Lincoln was the choice of that convention for the next
President. How the flags were waved, the handkerchiefs, like snowflakes,
waved everywhere, and the shout rang out till the wigwam fairly trembled
with the ringing shouts of free men - and men to make others free.

To reach the Capitol at Washington Lincoln had to go in secret and on a
train not known to most men. For it had been declared he should never go
alive through Maryland. Fort Sumter was fired on by rebel cannon, and all
the North as well as South was eager for the fray. Abraham Lincoln called
for seventy-five thousand men, and there was a war meeting called at
Hartford, and Julius C. Burrows was then the Michigan young man orator.
There was no lack of volunteers, and when I got home I told father how I
felt, that I thought I ought to enlist. He said, "This war, just beginning,
is not the little breakfast spell that some think it, but will probably
last for years, and it is just as necessary that the army be fed and
clothed as it is for the men to go to war. If you go to war then the farm
may be run by some hired man, it will soon be in bad condition." Later I
went with others to see the boys in blue in camp at Pokagon, just before
going to the field of strife.

Only a few weeks later and there was a call for three hundred thousand men.
Then originated the song, "We are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred
thousand More." And they came, and another three hundred thousand from the
South met them, and they fought like brave men, long and well; they piled
the ground with brothers slain.

The Decision.

During this spring and summer was my period in life when eyes speak love to
eyes which speak again. There was to be great doings at Paw Paw, and I
thought of that musical young widow across the way. But I have heard that
she has said that she should never marry again. "Well," said I, "she don't
look that way. If I ask her to go and she says yes then I am petty sure
that I ask another question she will say yes. If she says no then I need
ask no other questions." So as blushingly, and bashfully as a young man
will ask such a delicate question I asked for her company to Paw Paw. Yes,
we took the ride to Paw Paw; what we saw at Paw Paw I can't tell, but I
recollect the ride and the talk. We took another ride later, but just
before going all of my people met all of her people at her house and
Westley at the melodeon sand this song. "Oh, Happy, Happy Be Thy Dreams."
Then the minister bade us rise and join right hands, and in the presence of
these witnesses pronounced us husband and wife, September 24, 1861.

Then Westley, Mariah and Lucretia rode with us to Pokagon, and Ben Thomas
came home with the team and we went on our way rejoicing to see Uncle
William and Aunt Rosina in Chicago. Yes, we had a good visit and planned to
return across the lake, but the lake was so rough the boat did not go till
two days later. So I suppose we made uncle and family twice glad.

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