This is the first part of the autobiography of Allie Oen Beymer. He was Born in Elmdale, Chase County, Kansas, 11 June 1882. It covers Chase County Kansas, a short period in Arkansas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Norman Oklahoma; Colorado; Portland, Oregon; and Eugene, Oregon. I (Mike Beymer) am transcribing this as written with no intentional changes.

I was at a dance last night. I don't rember if any of my brothers or sisters were there or not, but I remember I got too tired to stay awake, so mama put a quilt on the floor in the corner back of the door, and there I slept until they took me home sometime before daybreak. I am only four and it's the first thing i definitely remember. Surely I must have been completely worn out for I still imagine I can feel the comfort of that quilt, and my mothers smile, as I cuddled in that quilt. This is the year 1886.

Up to now I have been wearing dresses as is the custom of all little girls and boys at this date. I have been begging mama to let me wear knee pants. She make all my clothes and last night my brother Jimmie who is five years older than I took me in the bedroom and made the change. It is a real thrill to come out before the family with my new pants. Everybody is telling me how big I am. No more dresses for me. From babyhood to boyhood in one jump as far as I am concerned. From here on the world is different, and I feel I have a part in the bigger things of life.

Spring has come and the things are bright and gay for the whole family, for papa took up a homestead about three or four miles south of Clemets, Kan. It is in a little draw that extends east from a small creek and we boys are excited looking forward to the time when we can move out into the country, altho Clements has a population of only about one hundred people. But moving to a new place is fun.

We haven't moved yet but we were all out to the farm to day and watched papa hauling hay. He had to take it up a hill and said the oxen were balky and he whipped them but they wouldn't pull it up to the barn. Papa says he don't like oxen any way and is going to trade them off for horses. I wish he could for I don't like their horns, and I get scared when he whips them.

It is March and a beautiful day on the prairie. Our shanty is finished, so we are out on the homestead today to see the well papa dug so we could have water. I watched him take a peach limb and witch for water and he found it only a short distance from the house. Mama was carrying my baby brother George, as Jimmie and I stayed close by while we all looked into the clear water which was only about four feet from the surface. How I enjoyed looking over the hills, For every thing looked so far away to me.

April has come and it's getting warmer every day. Papa is over the hill breaking prairie sod with three hourses. He traded his oxen off for two horses and borrowed one from a neighbor. One of the horses for which he traded is balky when he has a heavy load to pull.

My big brother Dick says they are going to plant corn, cane, and water-melons.

It is summer now and it's awfully hot. This is a sad day for me because the hot days made some dogs go mad and one bit our shep. That's why my brothers are going to take him over the hill to shoot him. They will bury him there and I can go over some time to see his grave. He was a good shep and we all liked him so much. I cried too. Any way the water-melons are ripe now, so Jimmie and I take our little wagon and haul them clear over the hill. They are nice big green ones and we eat all we want, but it's hard to pull them over the hill. Papa says, "the corn isn't very good, but the cane is all right, and we will have some good feed for the cow and horses next winter.

There is a Man with whiskers, who is working for some of the neighbors, and he eats at our house. He can play the fiddle, and I have decided to learn to play the fiddle too, when I get big.

One day going home from school Sam hit me right in the eyes with a long limber iron weed after he had striped off all the leaves. It made me mad, so I got him down in a ditch on his back. His big brother tried to pull me off, then my brother Jimmie put him down in another ditch. They both promised not to do it again, and we let them up but I like Sammie and go to his house to play when mama will let me. Once I took one of his play spools home with me and papa made me take it all the way back because I didn;t ask him for it. I won't take any thing that way again.

I am getting used to school now, and like to see how good I can get my lessons. We have literary society nearly every Thursday night. The big scholars have debates about which is the most important, the broom or the dish rag, and things like that. Sometimes it;s about Washington and Lincoln. Sometime I am going to get a piece to speek up on the platform. I think it would be fun.

We are moving back to town again. I don;t know if I like it better in town or out on the prairie, but I got used to the little Prairie Grove school house and I like it. It wass called Prairie Grove because the government set out a grove of trees about one-half mile from it. I like to hold hands with Katie Gibson and sometimes we go clear down to the grove and back. I have lots of fun with Katie.

I am finishing this term of school in Clements. Think I will like it here for my sister Virginia is teaching, and I'll get to go to her. It will seem funny for my own sister to be teacher, but I'm going to study and be the best in my class. There are two teachers in this school Virginia is sixteen years old. She must be sixteen to get a teachers certificate.

School is out and I won a prize for being the best in my class. I thought I could if I tried. It was a box of stationary and it;s nice.

Something happened today that made me awfully mad. A lot of the town boys were down to the river at the old swimi'n hole. They have a long rope tied to the limb of a tree so they can swing out over the river and drop into the middle where it is deep. Well Jimmie thought he could swing hard enough to come back to the bank again but he didn't. As he kept getting slower and slower the big boys gathered around him in a circle and told him to drop, and they would catch him so he wouldn't get his clothes wet. He was hanging about six feet from the water, and they promised sure they wouldn't let him get his clothes wet, so he dropped for there was nothing else he could do. Then they all jumped back and let him go clear out of sight. It was all he could do to swim to shore with all his clotes on, but he made it, and I started for the house screaming, "I'll tell mama on them." It was warm and Jimmie sat in the sun and dried his clothes before he came home.

The cottonwood River has many good swimming holes in it, and some are deep; the older boys like to see who can stay down the longest and it frightens me for I can't swim yet.

Yesterday was a nice sunny day. Brother Willie and is boyfriend with Jimmie and I walked down along the river to look at the big cottonwoods, elms, hickory, and other beautiful trees. We were standing on the new stone arch bridge about one mile east of town when two men, in a horse top buggy, came acrossfrom tward town. When they had crossed they turned around and started back again. We thought they were after us and started for town on the run. Willie and his friend jumped over the river bank and hid, but it was too far down for me, so Jimmie and I kept going. They took out a sack and we thought they were going to put me in it. We ran into somebody's yard and made them believe we lived there. We dared them to come into our yard.

We have a nice shepard dog again, and I like him; but Jimmie was cutting the tall weeds in our back yard with a scythe and Shep ran in frontof him after a turkey and got his leg cut. I think he will get well sometine. I like to know when Shep is outside at night for I and afraid when it is dark even when I'm upstairs in bed.

I think papa traded off our claim for some livestock and rented a farm about four miles southeast of town, We will move out there now for papa likes to farm, and I think we all like it better because we can ride horses raise pigs, chickens, and a garden.

Well we have moved and part of our house is made of logs. All we boys sleep upstairs in the attic. I can see the shingles right close to me when I am in bed, and I like to here the rain falling on them; but it;s awfully dark up there for we haven;t any light only the lantern when they don't need it out side. The stairway is all open and goes right down into the kitchen. We listen and sometimes when mama is outside we can slip down and get into the cookie jar. Once mama caught us and we had to go outside for a switch. We felt bad because we got caught. My brother Zone was three years younger than I so mama blamed me the most, and I think she whipped me the hardest.

We have four hourses, two cows, some chickens, and two sows with a lot of little pigs. Papa and Dick and Willie have hauled in stone and built walls for a barn and chicken-coop. Then they covered that with poles and put brush on the poles, then hay on the brush for a roof. It's nice and warm but when it rains, it sureleaks awful.

I went out on the prairie today to catch the horses, and he let me ride one of the mares in. We were coming on the trot and when we got close to the house, the horses stopped so quick, I fell right off onto the ground. It didn't hurt any, but it scared me bad. Mama gave him a scolding for it too.

There is lots of wild hay across the prairies and the neighbos all change work to get it up into the stack. They use a mowing machine, a rake and a go-devil. Sometimes I ride on the go-devil and it's lots of fun to be in a big piole of loose hay. Sometimes I pummp some cold water out of the well into a jug with some weeet gunny sacks around it and take it out for the men to drink. I take the hoe and cut sunflowers out of the corn too, but I musn't get far away because the coyotes might get me; I'm only six years old now.

School has started again, and I'm going back to Prairie Grove the same place I went when I lived on the claim. I will have to walk two miles if I go around the section line road or I can cut through and save walking so far. When I cut through I can stop at a ledge of slate rock that is about half way home and whittle out slate pencils to use at school. I have a nice little slate with red binding around it. We do all our writing and arithmatic on our slate. But mama don't like for me to play on the way home from school.

This is January, right in the middle of winter and it's awful cold and windy. The snow is deep and has drifted all over the fences; it's hard on top and I can walk on it. I haven't any over coat but when it is too cold I wear my big brother's coat so I won't freeze. We haven't got much wood at home, because my big brothers have to haul it from the Cottonwood River. It's five miles away and it's been so stormy, they couldn't do it, but papa says corn is only worth ten cents a bushel, so we burn some corn to make the wood last longer. My brothers catch lots of cotton tail rabits in the snow so we have rabbit to eat nearly every day.

Having lots of fun at prairie Grove now on literary nights. I sing while sister Lizzie plays the organ and I like it fine. They like to hear me speek too, and I am learning lots of little pieces. Some will go on the stage and whistle, some will play the french harp, (harmonica) some the fiddle; others will have a dialogue, or maybe a debate. Sometimes the whole audience will sing with the organ. Everybody takes part; farmers, clerks from town, cowboys, women, old or young, in suits or overhauls, what ever we had to wear, for we are all poor, but wear the best we have. Mr. Swainheart is still the teacher but I like him better than I did the first year I went to him, when I was only five years old.

I will tell you my favorite piece to speek.

I guess you think because I am, a wency tency feller, that I can't speak and whistle too, and sing and shout and holler. Just listen now and I will sing a funny little ditty. I'll open my mouth and speak out loud, and try to sing it pretty. I wish I was a little bird; I'd fly to the top of some tree; Id sit and sing my sad little song, I can't stay here by myself. Can't stay here by myself. I'd sit and sing my sad little song, I can;t stay here by myself.

Can't spell? I rather guess I can.
And spell an awfull long word too.
Just listen now.
G-u-m gum, s-u-m-p sump, gum sump, t-i-o-n tion, gum sump tion
A-i-k aik gum sump tion aik, e-n en, gum sump tion aik en
F-l-e-e-c-h fleech, gum sump tion aik en fleech, er er,
Gum sump tion aik en fleech er.
Can't speek? Just listen to this.
I've spoken twenty speeches,
I spoke about the burning deck,
Down where Miss Perkin teaches.
I spoke about the bloody war,
I spoke it to my mother,
And now I'll stand up straight and firm,
And try to speek another.
He is fallen! We may noe pause before that great prodigy, whose power terrified and magnificance attracted. Grand gloomy and peculiar, he sat upon his throne a sceptered hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his own origonality.
Just hear that!
Then I would run to my seat.
We have a big white horse and his name is Jim. A rattlesnake bit hin on the leg and it swelled up as big as a stove pipe; but we never could get the swelling out of it. It dosn't seem to hurt him.
Yesterday Willie and Jimmie hitched up Nell and old Jim to the wagon to haul some hay from the stack in the field to the barn. They stopped the wagon along side the stack. Jimmie stayed in the wagon, Willie got out, layed the lines on the ground and climbed on the stack, ready to pitch the hay down. Just then the dogs came barking and chasing a jack rabbit right by the horses. Then the boys began yelling, "sickem Shep, sickem Shep." That frightned the hourses and away they went for the barn. Jimmie had to jump out for the lines on the ground. Old Jim was swinging his big leg for all he was worth but Nell could run faster so they ran in a circle, hit the corner of the stone fence and knocked it down. This slowed them down and they soon stopped, but it was fun to watch old Jim try to run with his big leg swinging along. Anyway the dogs got the rabbit, and we had a fry.

It is spring again and papa has rented the same farm again for the next year. I am glad for we have a peach orchard here. They are small but I like 'em. One night I dreamed there was a monkey in one of the peach trees. It was so real I was afraid to go into the orchard the next day.

It's corn planting tome again so I have to sit on the Planter and jerk the checkrow lever all day. I must do all right for I have to help Mr. Messer plant his next week. When the corn comes up I like to look down the rows to see how good a job I did.

Having some bad storms this spring. When Willie and I were husking corn in the field the wind blew the wagon sideboards from the barn almost to where we were working. It would blow our fodder away, so we were compelled to quit work. It blew the hay roof off the barn and chicken coop. There is lots of plowing to be done on this place. Jimmie cried to plow and then cried to quit.

Well school is out and now I have to hoe the corn. The sunflowers grow so fast and so do the artichokes and pig weeds. Out garden looks nice and papa says we will have roasting ears by the forth of July. I think we will have watermelons by then too. When it's not windy, It is pretty hot and I go to the swimi'n hole on Rock Creek. It's more than a mile.

Last fourth of July we all went to the neighborhood celebration down on Rock Creek and I found a quarter in the dust. I bought a double barrel cap pistol for fifteen cents and a dimes worth of caps. Zone and I have a lot of fun with it this summer. The dandelions are thick on the prairies and we play they are our cattle, roping them with twine strings and jerking their heads off.

Summer didn't last long. I had a lot of fun and a lot of work.

I am now going to school again. A lady teacher this time and I like her fine. There was something awful happened yesterday. It scares me when I think of it. When I got to school yesterday I saw some boys off by themselves talking. I went over to see what they were dooing, and they were talking about prairie fires. Everybody knows how bad they are. Several miles north we could see smoke, so the boys said anybody ought to know better than to start a fire when the wind is blowing like it is today, and the grass is so dry too. Almost all the school was watching getting blacker and higher and wider, and the wind kept getting stronger every minute. The scholars kept raising up in their seats and looking out the north windows. Even the teacher would look often now, and by eleven o'clock the school was in such a panic she was forced to dismiss. The oldest Varnum boy, about sixteen, told the teacher they had eighteen head of claves tied in the barn and lots of stock in other places, and asked if she would let him run home and help his father take care of them. She let him go, but locked the dooor so no one else could get out. He arived home in time to help but they didn't save them all. The sky kept getting darker and blacker with smoke; the girls were screaming; when at 12 o'clock it got so hot we couldn't touch a window paneon the north side of the building. Then there was a big swoosh and it was past. When the smoke cleared away we went outside to see if the building was on fire. We had played so much around close to the building that the grass was all worn off ans this had saved our schoolhouse.

The fire was sweeping on toward the south and the prairie was a black and dusty place with rabbits, coyotes, and all wild prairie life running here and there with no place to hide. Here and there a whirlwind was whipping the blackened grass and charcoal into a funnel like shape through the sky which made the whole country look spooky as we looked out over the blackened mass.

Before it was finally put out it had burned a scope ten miles wide and about twenty miles in length, taking houses, barns, haystacks, livestock, and injuring many people. My papa and brothers were home and carried water from the well throwing it on the shingles of the house. They saved the house but the front gate burned, and all our hay roofs.

A tall dark complected man has been coming to see sister Virginia. They are going to be married and are going to Covington, Kentucky to live. She just bought an organ a short time back and they are taking that too. It's so far I don't knnow when we will ever see her again, and I love her so much.

The winter has been so cold, and we burn lots of corn again. We also haul lots of corn cobs from the neighbors feed lots to burn.

There are lots of good things to eat this winter. Plenty of butter, rabbit, prairie chicken, sweet potatoes, irish potatoes, home-made sorgum molasses, and mama makes bread to eat with our pork. We all went to the creek last summer and picked wild grapes and goose berries. Papa makes a pit and buries out turnips and apples and cabbage in the straw, covered with dirt.

One night papa said we could go down to Mr. Merrits to stay all night and when we came home the next morning we had a baby sister. They said the doctor brought her in the night. We call her Inex Myrtle.

Well it's may again. The birds are coming around and school will soon be out. There will be blue birds, medow larks, red birds, snipes, turtle doves, swallows, black birds, crows, hawks, whipper-wills, hummingbirds, mocking birds, and a lot more I don't know. I like to listen to all of them when I am down along the hedge fence to watch the coyotes away from the turkeys.

Papa says we are going to move one and one-half miles south this year. It's fun to move, but I like it here on account of the orchard and the hedge fences where the birds sing and the rabbits hide. We call this the Miller place. I like to hear the turtle doves coo in the distance in the evening, and I like to lay in bed at night and hear the coyotes howl. Mama lets us take off our shoes in May and go barefooted, just a little while at a time. Zone and I have a good run the first time we take them off.

Last winter Virginia taught school about five or six miles west of here, and it waas too far for her to ride from home everyday, so she had to board with one of the neighbors, and just come home on the weekends. One Friday when mama and I were on our way after her, we saw a coyote standing about two hundred yards from the road. We tought we could scare him away, so began to yell and clap our hands; but instead of running from us he ran toward us. Now it was our time to get scared. We made our team run getting away from there. The coyote followed a short distance, then sat down ans watched us go. Since then I have been afraid of coyotes. I have watched our shep dog chase a coyote a while and then the coyote would turn around and chase him awhile. There sure is a lot of them around here. Sometimes the big boys find a den and dig out several little ones. They get a bounty for their scalpes. I thinks it's five dollors each.

Well it's getting late in the summer and school will soon start again. We will have a man teacher this year whose name is Gibson. He is Katie's father. They live about Two miles from us, so I get to go over there and play sometimes. Once we played on the haystacks and Mr. Gibson had told his boys not to play on the hay. And what do you think he did? He took them to the house and whipped them with a strap after telling them to take off their coats. It made me feel so bad, I went right home. ?ayes, who was the oldest boy, was raking hay one afternoon when the horses ran away and threw him in front of the rake teeth. He was cut up pretty bad, and I don't think he ever did get over it.