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STORY OF ANOTHER PIONEER BY C. B. STEBBINS
June 7, 1882.
I am your brother Abiram!"
You may well imagine there was "a scene. '"
And where had this brother been in all the years gone by; so far away that he could not communicate with his kin, and now returns with a wife and two grown-up sons, as from the grave ? He had gone to the then "far west, " and made a home—near the head of Cayuga lake, in Central New York! And that was considered practically about as much beyond the bounds of civilization when he settled there in the early years of the present century, as the most distant regions known. Little did that boy think he would find his future home about three times as far from his native hills, and still be east of the West.
So my uncle, with his wife and two sons, remained with us, visiting their friends, till the approach of spring warned that the sleighing would ere long be gone; and all the friends and neighbors came together to bid them farewell, as they started on their homeward journey of a week—a trip that may now be made between breakfast and supper—taking it for granted that they would never meet again in this world.
Such was the idea of the west in New England fifty or sixty years ago. Buffalo had been heard of, because of the valiant deeds of the British army in burning the little village. Beyond that, little was generally known of the western world.
When I was fourteen years of age, my father died, and all the expectations of my future life were changed; and I was left to fight the battle of life alone. When I was twenty-one I had learned a trade—possibly some things besides. And then came visions of the West.
Michigan
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