Letters, Memoirs & Family Stories of our Kansas Ancestors As told in their own words
Sumner County

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I was given a handwritten letter by a worker at our public library; the letter was found inside a book of biographies of Kansas Women.
Elaine Nall Bay
Rains County, Texas

On Sept. 18 - 1872 my father and mother J.D. Austin, three sisters and two brothers one team and covered wagon and four milk cows started from Oregon, Ogle County Ills for Kansas.

He had plowed a large square of land and burned it off before he hauled the lumber from Wichita to build the house it was boxed and the cracks battened and a good shingle roof.  On March 11th 1873 there seemed to be a haze like Indian summer, hardly any breeze almost too warm for comfort, about 4: oclock father told my brother Charlie to hitch up and go after a barrel of water, we hauled our water a full mile and father thought it might be going to storm.  He had not gone far when the wind changed to the north and then we could see the flames leaping higher and higher as the wind drove it before it.  Then clouds of black smoke began to roll up and hide the flames when it came over the last high ground it looked like a solid wall of fire.  We had poured all the water we had in buckets got all the old sacks and had them wet and when that head fire came racing across the stubble and the corn stalks where the cows had been fed caught fire and blowed clear over all the fire guards, we ran from one thing to another beating out the flames, it lasted only a few minutes, we untied the cows and saw them going ahead of the fire as wild as deer, when the stable and hay caught we could do no more, but my mother risked her life when she ran into that place and untied the calf and dragged it into a safe place.  The main fire was miles away but there was plenty to do for an hour or two as it seemed as if the whole world was going up in smoke.  The house was safe but everything in the shape of feed was gone all the extra harness, ropes, tools, boxes and the many things put in the stable for shelter were in ashes or ruined.  When my brother came home with the water he looked scared and white he could not tell whether we were alive or not and we were as anxious about him

Last update: Saturday, July 20, 2024 16:51:22

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