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- I don't know much about this sale but my mother has since told me how the trades were made.
We must have camped at Camden for several weeks so daddy could work there.
Finally we started on and had a pretty good road to Washington and we made good time. When we got to Washington we found a number of families there and they were well fixed. They had good houses, barns, horses, cows, mules and a lot of slaves. We camped there for quite a while and daddy did carpenter work.
From Washington we drove 35 or 40 miles to the Forks, (Paraclifta). There one road went north to Ft. Smith and the other went to Willow Springs and Laynesport.
At the Forks there was a Stage Coach station and several families living there. A man was building a corn mill and daddy helped him for a few days until the waters in the creeks run down. They had just had a few days heavy rain and creeks were out of banks. From the forks we drove through a cane break for 4 or 5 miles to Anderson ferry. When we got the ferry Mr. Anderson had gone bear hunting and we had to wait for him to get back so he could put us across the river. Finally he came driving a yoke of oxen hitched to a slide and he had a big black bear on the slide. He came over and put us across the river and daddy helped him skin the bear. He then began blowing a cow horn and after a little bit two of his neighbors came to see what he wanted. everyone got all the bear meat he wanted. The next morning when we started on we got what bear meat we wanted and Mrs. Anderson gave my mother two big gourds full of bear lard to take along with us. By the way, the Anderson ferry is still being run by the Anderson family.
- Our next drive was to Willow Springs about 15 miles. When we got to
Willow Springs we found about six or seven families settled there. Three
of these families were the Taaffe families. They had good log houses; barns
and out houses and all of them had slaves. They had plenty of land in cultivation
and were gathering a big corn crop and they had to build more corn cribs
before they could finish gathering their corn.
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