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MEMOIRS OF MY GREAT-GREAT GRANDMOTHER,
ELEANOR HOWARD (THOMAS) BRITTAIN KNOWLTON
November 1834 – August 1908

Horse trading, selling one horse, then buying a “span” of horses. Eleanor’s dress catches fire, and daughter Helene gets smallpox from playing with old clothing. Ellen believes her dog has been poisoned and suspects another lodger. Mr. Brittain rides off, but vows to return “dead or alive.”

One time while I was living in Missouri father sent twenty five miles for me to come home. My brother was very sick. I had to go horseback and carry my baby. I had not gone many miles before I got disgusted with my horse and I asked the brother who had come for me to take the horse and let me ride his mule. I had always been used to riding good saddle horses and resolved to get rid of the horse I had with me as soon as I got home. One day a man came to fathers and wanted to buy a good work horse. Father told the man he had none to sell and I jumped at the chance to sell mine. The man was from St. Louis and asked me what I would take for the horse and when I told him sixty-five dollars he said that he would give me ten dollars cash and a nice new two-horse wagon.

This man thought a woman had the right to do as she liked, I guess, for he never asked me what my husband would say to my selling the horse, but my father asked me after the man had gone. I told him I did not know what my husband would say but that he would learn that I thought I had a perfect right to make the sale. Father said I had made a good bargain. The next thing was how I was to get home again. My brother who had been so sick was better and said one day that he would like to go home with me when I went. So father let me have a team and my brother D. R. Thomas and a negro boy and Brother Sam and I started out.

My brother Dan was to take the team and harness back. Father asked his housekeeper an old negro woman what have you to give Ellen to take back with her. She gave me a barrel of soap, lots of dried peas and beans and other useful things. We started early in the morning and reached home after dark with the baby crying and the chickens squawking.

Brother Dan knocked at the door and asked the woman who answered the door if we could stay all night, and she said no. I recognized my mother-in-law’s voice. Then Mr. Brittain came to the door and said, “I will go out and see who it is,” and he was the most surprised man you ever saw when he helped unload the wagon and said I had made a good trade. My mother-in-law said, “You would say so just the same if she had not.” The wagon was the one we gave to the Yankee boys of whom I have spoken before.

After that while we were living in El Dorado City I made my last trade. There was an emigrant man came to our hotel and asked my husband if he wanted to buy a nice span of horses. My husband asked me if I wanted some new carriage horses. At first I said that I did not and then I said I would go out and look at them. My husband said if you take them you will have to give your gold watch in part payment for I have not enough cash with me and the man won’t wait for me to go to Placerville to the bank. I found the horses to be a lovely span of bay roans and told the man about the lack of enough cash and he said he would take the watch so I had a lovely team of my own.

This is April 1860 and Mr. Brittain is going to start over the Sierras to be gone most of the summer. He is going to take my span of horses but I have nice carriage horses which I am used to driving so I do not mind. I drive out every day with Miss Carrie Wassen as we both enjoy driving and I have nothing much to do but take care of my children. In the meantime my husband is engaging in the freight business in Carson City, Nevada and is having a nice house built for me. I collected several hundred dollars which was owing us and deposited it in Mr. Chas. Jackson’s safe as I had become suspicious of a man staying in the same hotel with us. I had at the time a very fine watch dog which Mr. Brittain had paid fifty dollars for. When I was out driving and left the carriage he would not let anyone touch the reins and he lay outside my door at night. One day he came to me whining and finally frothing at the mouth and I knew he had been poisoned and I suspected this man maybe had done the deed.

I had some sewing to do and Miss Wassen said that she would help me. Mr. Brittain had bought some calico at fifty cents a yard which he thought was beautiful and so I made this dress first. The day we finished it Carrie was out in the kitchen getting supper and I put on my hoops and the new dress over them and went out in the kitchen wishing my husband could see me in it. I went to the window to look out, the stove with a hot fire in it was near the window. Suddenly Carrie screamed to me, “Run, you are burning up!” The flames were starting up my back. She ran for her mother and I told them to get a bucket of water and throw on me which they did but my new dress and skirt were ruined and if it had not been that I had on hoops I would have been badly burned, too.

The summer slowly passed and though we had a nice time I began to wish for my husband to come for me. My sewing was all finished and Miss Carrie’s mother was an old lady but a south Methodist and did not approve of us girls running about the country as we did. She had known my father and was kind to me and I do not know what I would have done without her and Carrie but just the same I was getting very home sick for my brother had gone with my husband.

It is now the last of June or the first of July and I am not feeling very well. Mrs. Wassen had sent the children to her daughter Martha’s for the day so they would not disturb me. The oldest one came home but Martha and the other one did not come for a long time. When they did come they brought a lot of odds and ends of clothes and they were dressing up in them, the children’s dolls. They had found an old vest with large red roses in it and were having fun cutting it in pieces. Martha’s mother scolded her and said she was too old a girl to be playing with dolls. She always made such a bluster when anything did not please her. I told her I would pay for the vest and not to scold her Martha. She said she did not want any pay for it but that she had told Martha never to go up to the garret again and the matter was settled as we thought.

About a week afterward Helene came to me saying she was very sick. She had got a fever and complained of her head and back. The old lady was not home and I thought I would give the child a nice hot bath and put on a new dress and she would feel better, but she was still very sick when Mrs. Wassen got home. When I told her Helene’s symptoms she asked what I had done for her and I told her I had given her a bath to see if that would not allay the fever. She ranted at me saying I might have killed the child and immediately sent for DR. Hinnman. He came and they talked for quite awhile. He told me that I must let Mrs. Wassen take charge of Helene for she had small pox which she caught from that old vest. A man who had small pox died in it seven years ago and Mr. and Mrs. Wassen had had the disease also. They had put the man’s belongings in the garret of the hotel and they had never been touched since until the children had gone up there.

Helene was very sick and I was in a delicate condition so I sent for my husband. He stayed over one night and the next morning said he would have to go to the Morris ranch and get some heavy wheel oxen. When I demurred he said, “Ellen, you know the boys will soon be in Placerville and I have a new wagon which cost me eight hundred dollars at Diamond Springs and I must get oxen to go on it and get the teamsters started across the mountains as soon as possible. How much money have you got?” I told him I had about three hundred dollars in Jackson’s safe. He said that was not enough and that he must go to Placerville and get what more he needed. We had thirty-five hundred dollars in the bank there, which was to get me and my children home in case anything happened to him.

I said, “All right, but you be careful who sees you get the money.” And then told him that I felt sure I had been watched and about our dog being poisoned. He said, “Oh Ellen, you are so suspicious of people being dishonest. I have made my money honestly and there are plenty of others who have done the same. I will be back tonight dead or alive.” He tipped his hat and was gone.

All day I felt that something had happened to him and when I tried to be cheerful I could not dispel the gloom which hovered over me. Night came and he did not come and I was very restless. Mrs. Wassen tried to quiet me and said, “There is nothing the matter with your husband, all he cares for is money.” When bedtime came I could not sleep so I decided to try and finish Miss Carrie’s dress so we could drive to Placerville and look for my husband. Mrs. Wassen was a night owl and always around seeing what she could see or hear, so she came up to my room and made us put up the sewing and go to bed. This was the first night I had care of Helene since she was taken ill. She was sleeping soundly. I went to bed and dozed awhile and finally fell asleep and dreamed that some thieves had given by husband strychnine at the hotel in Placerville. I awoke and looked at the clock and it was between twelve and one A.M.

Immediately after I got up I heard horses’ feet clattering in front of the hotel and looked out to see which way they were going and it was toward Placerville. In a few moments I heard the same clatter of feet going back and consoled myself that they were come one going for the doctor. I tried to get to sleep but could not and I did not want to get up again and have the old lady tell me to go to bed again.

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