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   "We enjoyed ourselves in various ways just as you
do now. There was the regular dancing school twice a
week held in the old cabin that first winter. Euchre
parties became the fashion. Christmas and New Year's
suppers were made lively by the verbal and practical
jokes passed around.
    "We had turtle soup suppers, also. The turtles were
caught by cutting holes through the ice on what was
called 'Mud Lake', and brought to us by Abel Rasdall.
Mr. Peck sent some of them to a Mineral Point hotel
keeper'4 who informed us that he netted $50 on the sale
of the soup. The turtles were frozen solid, and rattled
together like stones, and were put in the cellar to thaw
out before we could dress them, and, going down in a
few days after I found they had thawed out and were
crawling around on the bottom of the cellar."
    Mrs. Peck's husband who started for California in
1844 was supposed to have been killed by the Indians
while crossing the plains.
    About 1838 the family removed to Baraboo and there
Mrs. Peck spent most of her life, returning to Madison
for frequent visits at her son, Victor Peck's home. Her
death occurred October 30, 1899 and her remains lie in
the Baraboo cemetery.
E......................................
             MRS. WILLIAM VROMAN
                  (Nee Harriet Field)
          Author-Mrs. E. C. Mason, Madison
 .................. ......I......................................................
11 ...........   ..........
     It was in the spring of 1836 that my embryonic father
 William Vroman anticipated the voice of Horace Greeley
 and "went West". It was to him a boyish adventure, en-
 couraged probably by his two brothers who had already
 gone. His destination was the new Territory of Wiscon-
 sin which had just been established, surveyed, platted
 and opened to the public for sale at $1.25 per acre. He
 experienced all the vicissitudes by field and flood that
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