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Salter, George H., 1826-ca. 1906 / Papers, ca. 1896-1913, 1965
Call Number, Stevens Point SC 60
[George Salter Memoirs], pp. [1]-34
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Page 7
-7- Tom and the man that wanted my place would put the horse in the cart and take the things and stow them away in the boat. By eleven o'clock the old man wanted to go to bed. I wished him good-bye and good night, and away I started. They had everything all ready to start when I got outside, but I went back to see if the old man was up. I told the boys to come out and see me. They said they would be out in a week from Sunday. I told them I would give them a good time and they should bring me the news. Sure enough, they came and we had a big time of it. They said that the old man was up about five o'clock in the mroning and they watched him. He went to the house that I had lived in and knocked at the door. Then he opened it. They said that you would have laughed to see him: he pulled off his hat, slashed it on the floor and jumped on it and kicked it out of the door, and went around the yard. Then he went to the boys and asked them if they had seen anything of George Salter. They said that they had not. He called them all dam liars and said that he would send them all away that very day and have me arrested as I had made him drunk and robbed him of twenty pounds. Tom Curby was the first to go to him to settle up with him. He swore that he did not owe him anything and told him to go away, and said that it was all his fault that I was gone and that he saw him fixing up the boat the day before. He knew there was something up and so he took another drink of brandy as he always kept a good supply on hand. So the boys did no work that day. I went to work all that summer and all the winter did not lose a week, and made my two shillings and sometimes six pence more per day and boarded myself, thinking that was big wages. The next summer I worked all around, first to one farmer and then to another. They gave me eighteen pence and my board per day. I had saved up quite a little sum of money and the woman worked around and got enough to pay rent and keep the house. There was an old rich farmer who owed me one pound and the wife five shillings. He lived about a half mile from our house. I told my wife to put my supper on the table and she could go to Peter Prevow and get that money as I was very tired as I was threshing early and late. I had eaten my supper and gone to bed when I heard my wife coming and crying. I thought she was fooling me. I asked her what was the matter. She told me that old Prevow had shut her in the house when she went in and swore he would kill her if she ever asked him for money again. That raised the English in Salter. I got up and put some of my clothes on and started for Mr. Prevows, but the wife said he would kill me. I told her if he did he would be the first man that did it. I had heard he was a hard nut to handle. I told my wife to stay home but no, she said if he killed me he would have to kill her too so away I started. We were not long in getting there either.
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