them, and, on March 19th, started west for Paris, Illinois, over “roads as bad as mud can make them.”
They went across the state, a few miles a day, calling occasionally on an old friend or on one of their many cousins who had settled in the Middle West. Once they stopped over night in Urbana at the Middlesex House, where they found six beds in a 6 x 9 room, and had for breakfast “fried eggs swimming in lard, the almost universal food in this part of the world.”
By April first they had arrived in Quincy. “Had a hard time finding the town,” says Dr. Flint. “Most of the way through oak-wooded prairie, uncultivated.... Horseback distance from Terre Haute, 348 miles.”
Quincy was their headquarters while they were seeking and buying sheep, finding a few at one place, a few at another. Father once told me of the vexations they had at first, trying to drive in one homogeneous band all these little groups of sheep, each with its own bell wether.
During the last of April and the first of May, while still buying stock, they sheared their sheep at Warsaw, Illinois, selling the wool, 6,410 pounds, for $1,570.45 to Connable-Smith Co., of Keokuk, Iowa. At this time it is recorded that father received a remittance of $1,000.00 from a California acquaintance, undoubtedly a welcome addition to their funds with such an undertaking ahead of them. They must have had their trip well planned before they left Volcano, for Pacific Coast mail to meet them thus.
