Another excerpt from…

MEMOIRS OF ELEANOR HOWARD (THOMAS) BRITTAIN KNOWLTON
NOVEMBER 1834 – AUGUST 1908

Preface

June 19, 1902
About three years ago, I was earnestly requested by my son-in-law, Theo Madsen, to tell him something of my ancestors in my own biography. Owing to my age, sixty eight years, I deferred the task, as it seemed to me, it would be a tedious one, and furthermore I had never interrogated him on the subject of his family. My remarks may be brief but I will show by relating what I know of them that I am not ashamed of any of my ancestors or of my own life.

The first section of Eleanor’s manuscript is a recitation of her family and ancestors, based primarily on her memory of family tales. Her recollections are accompanied by annotations by my mother, Helen Lind, and my sister, Bonnie Stevens, which spell out where the family stories are contradicted by other genealogical resources.

I decided to skip over the family tree and get to Eleanor’s telling of her own life story.

Winter of 1851 spent visiting in Tennessee and Kentucky, a summer in Virginia, then on to Ohio and Missouri by wagon train

I was fourteen years old and not very strong when mother died and when the summer had passed and I did not improve, father decided to take me to visit mother’s relatives in west Tennessee and some of his who lived in Kentucky. We spent the winter of ’51 visiting, then went to Virginia before returning home. We spent the summer of ‘52 there. Then father sold out and we moved to Missouri.

We had a nice trip, for we had our own teams and camped out. UNCLE JOSEPH FITZGERALD moved at the same time and we had quite a train. After we got to Ohio some of the negroes ran away. We did not try to find them but camped long enough for them to get hungry and you should have seen them slipping in and heard them asking to be forgiven. They said it was not [pleasant?] to be free after all. We moved on and had no more trouble. Father and Uncle had land in Missouri and we soon became settled for the winter. Father’s land was in Laclede County and Uncle’s in Camden.

One of father’s sisters whom I neglected to mention [was Aunt Esther who] lived in Green Co., Missouri for years (sic) and owned large tracks of land, so the next trip father and I took was through southwest Missouri. I was always ready for a trip. My sister would never go. This trip father and I went to Springfield and visited Uncle Jameson.

Then we traveled through Neosho and McDonald Co. where we visited the Bullards, my mother’s relatives on her mother’s side. This was the spring of ’53. Cousin Mary Bullard and I went to church [on] Sunday while I was there and she told me to count the people that came in and when anyone came in that was not my relative, she would pinch me. I counted up to forty and then she gave me a sharp pinch. I told her I did not want to know any more relatives.

The next day father and I called on Kitt Bullard’s widow. After that he made love to her and they became engaged to be married. We then went home. This was the last trip I ever took with my father.

I was thinking of getting married myself and made up my mind I would before a stepmother came over me, although I liked the woman of father’s choice. I had two suitors, one whose father was quite wealthy and the other a widow’s son with nothing but a good education. He was a graduate of Springfield College, Missouri. The suitor with money lacked intellect. I was the first of father’s children to get married.

When Mr. Brittain said he and I were engaged, Father told me that he did not have any slaves to give me. I told him that if he had, that I would have given them back. I was the only girl that had learned to cook and do all kinds of work necessary to be done on a farm. There were ten of us girls who lived on adjoining places and I was the only one who would not own slaves.

Having to do my own work did not prevent me from taking the man of my choice. David L. Brittain and I were married on March 9th of ’54. I was 18 years old on November 8th and Mr. Brittain two years older than I. His mother gave him 40 acres of land. Father gave me a grand wedding my saddle horse and saddle. He said that was all he had to give me.

When I had been married six months, Father and Colonel Cherry came from Lebanon to Tuscumbia to visit us. Mr. Brittain was doing business in a dry goods store with a man by the name of Cummings. We were living in furnished rooms. I knew that father and the colonel were coming to visit us so I had a nice dinner prepared. Colonel Cherry said that it was a credit to any man to have a daughter who could cook such a dinner. I had invited several of our friends to be present. Well, after that father gave me money to furnish my house, a Negro girl to do my work and finally gave me eighty acres of land and helped to build us a house. It was there my first child was born. Mr. Brittain soon sold the house and then we moved on his forty acres. We raised a crop on it, sold it and bought horses, took them down south and sold them, came back and prepared to come to California. This was in the fall of ’56.

Next: Setting out

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