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construct the canals, railroads, highways, dwellings, barns, fences, and sow the grain, was at first a task that required strong arms, persevering minds, and fearless spirits. Ohio had many of them in 1828. But the equal of any man, and the superior of many was Abram Garfield. He was large, robust, of light complexion, auburn hair and with a high forehead. Physically, he was one of the strongest men in Ohio. He seldom met his equal in feats of physical strength; and if there was found any huge boulder, or large log which the men on the canal or in the woods could not handle, they called for " Abe Garfield," and the obstruction was removed. He was a fearless, frank, energetic man, less rude than the majority of his associates, and giving the heartiest expressions of his love for his family, and his good will toward his neighbors.

Such was the man, who, with his younger halfbrother, Amos Boynton, went into the wilderness of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, to clear a spot for their homes. Their land was two miles and a half from the nearest open road, and they were obliged to cut the way for their ox team through the underbrush, and to build a rude hut to occupy at night. It is said the two young pioneers shook hands as they took the axes to fell the first tree on the line between their lands, and said they would live and die together there. They had never owned a foot of land before. This was their own. Wolves might howl, and bears might threaten, they were happy in the consciousness of superior strength and right.

The forest steadily and surely melted away before the vigorous woodsmen, and the proper logs having been saved from fire and axe for the purpose, the work of constructing a log house for Amos was begun. They had no thought of pride then, and but little of convenience; but, influenced by the overmastering desire to get a home of their own as soon as possible, they constructed a building which was said afterwards to be too small for a convenient loom house.

A few days after their first arrival, Amos concluded to bring his family and lodge them in a log shed or weaving-cabin belonging to their nearest neighbor, about a mile and a half from their clearing. So the family were brought and stowed away in that little cabin, scarcely twelve feet square, and there on the ground they set their rude furniture and waited day by day for the completion of their new home. One child, Mr. Henry B. Boynton, was born in that little structure.

When the cabin for Amos was covered, and a floor laid in one end of it for the beds, Amos moved his family in, and, according to the previous understanding, Abram went to Newburgh for his family. It was New Year's day, 1830. There was a heavy fall of snow, and in the clearings it had drifted badly. He was obliged to unyoke the oxen often, and drive them wallowing over a ravine, and returning drag the rude ox sled himself through the snow. The road had improved somewhat before his return, but what was gained in more solid snow banks, was lost in be

ing heavily loaded with his household goods and family. That trip from Newburgh to their clearing in Orange away back in January, 1830, Mrs. Garfield never has forgotten, notwithstanding the subsequent bitter and dangerous experiences. The oldest boy, Thomas, was then nine or ten years of age, and, inheriting his father's hardy qualities, gave considerable assistance. But it was a long, weird, cold and exciting journey through an almost unbroken forest, on a road such as the woodmen now would consider to be unfit and unsafe for the transportation of wood.

Yet the whole family, with a feeling akin to that the traveler on the ocean feels when longing for land, looked forward with joyful anticipation to the establishment of a home and the erection of those household gods with which all childhood homes abound.

It was a joyful meeting at the log hut there in the woods. Two brothers, two sisters and their families, with the one distant neighbor, were to be a community, a State, a law unto themselves, and they de termined that love should abolish the need of law. Rough in manners, some of them might have been, and probably were; uncouthly dressed, perhaps, if judged by the standards of the Boulevards or Broadway, rough hands there must have been; but the great hearts and strong brains which make nobles of the laborers, and found great nations, were there also.

"Is this your house. Uncle Amos?" asked the children.

"Yes, and yours, too, for a while," said Amos. Mrs. Garfield is said to have been delighted with the consciousness that she could stand on their own soil.

"Is this our own land, Abram?" said she. “I cannot realize it."

Years afterward, and even to this day, the sisters visit frequently the spot where first they set foot on their own land, and each lives over again the sensations of those good old days. So frequently did Alpha visit the place where she first stopped and asked: "Amos, is this our land?" and so sacred did she hold it, that the children gave it the name of "Mother's retreat," and always scrupulously left her to herself whenever they saw her put on her bonnet and start in the direction of the place. Births, marriages, deaths, have come since then. The strong men are laid low, the children are scattered, and the trees have been cleared away and grown again, but the two women live to visit their sacred "retreats," and to recite the tales of their early adventures in the ears of a wondering generation.

When the two families were safely packed away in the little cabin with one room and one fire-place, the brothers began the construction of Abram's house.

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They selected a spot about forty rods from the other cabin, and on an elevated mound, behind which was a little ravine and a diminutive streamlet. short distance down the ravine was a living spring, which was found afterward to be a most convenient and valuable household appendage.

There, with the ox team for the transportation of timber from the adjacent forest, and with their own natural Yankee skill to hew it, and their own strong arms to raise it, they constructed the old log cabin, without a "raising," and, as Amos always took pride in adding, "without whiskey."

This log house was nearly square, with the front door in the middle, and the windows, about two feet square, in each end. It was ready for occupancy in the early spring, and in time to sow the front yard with wheat. During the summer other cabins were erected within a circuit of a mile and a half, so that they did not long feel the weight of an almost complete isolation. It required the closest management for the new farmer to secure a livelihood through the months preceding the sale of the first crop, and no little watching to keep his family from the wolves and from the possible visits of fiercer beasts. But all seem to have willingly endured all the privations of poverty and isolation with cheerfulness, often making jokes of their greatest hardships. The brothers often exchanged work, and so together cleared the fields of stumps, constructed fences, and set out fruit trees. Such saplings, seeds, or stock as they needed, one or the other procured at Cleveland. So that at the close of the autumn of 1830 both farms were in a prosperous condition, giving promise of rich harvests in the year to come.

Other relatives, and many of his former acquaintances, purchased tracts of land in the county and in adjoining counties, and the three years which fol

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