Trustworthy

My father, Frank Wallace, left home at the age of thirteen and signed on an English trading ship as a cabin boy. It sailed from Edinburg Scotland and for the next six years he sailed on several trading ships. When the ships docked in different ports he would do some trading of his own.

On one voyage to Ireland he met my mother Mollie. His next voyage was to North America. He had been there on two other voyages where he had made friends in Boston and Staten Island. He liked the people there and was somewhat overcome when he found that he could have land just for the claiming.

When he returned to England he hired a sloop and sailed to Dublin, where Mollie was living. After begging for her hand they were married and left for America within the month.

Upon landing in Boston my father bought a wagon, two mules, two oxen and a saddle horse. On the insistence of my mother he also got a milk cow.

They loaded what few other belongings they had and headed West. My father had met a trapper, Tom Buell, on one of his voyages, that had advised him where to settle. He told him to go to the foothills of the mountains where the Kaw River ran into the Missouri River. He told my father to stake out as much land as he needed and build a cabin there.

They found a spot on a small creek that ran into the Kaw River, not too far from where the Kaw ran into the Missouri. This was where they decided to build their cabin.

They built their cabin on a small rise above the creek which overlooked a long meadow. My father plowed about an acre to start with and planted what they would need for the first year.

Tom Buell arrived about a month after the cabin was built, bringing them supplies. He helped my father with some of the clearing and planning.

A year after the cabin was built I was born and they named me Ian, after my grandfather.

The next few years were full of learning, working, fishing and hunting. I had specific chores to do and we all worked well together. My mother taught me how to read, write and cipher. She was a stickler for making me do my chores and keeping up with my studies.

We found from Tom Buell that there was a small tribe of Utes that had just settled about seven or eight miles away. He took my father and I to see them.

I had never seen an Indian before and was amazed at their color and what they wore. Tom said that he didn’t know if they were friendly or not and I was sorta scared, but when we approached the camp a group of boys about my age took me with them to play. By the time I reached the age of fourteen we had cleared some twenty acres of good rich bottom land. We had corn, wheat, barley and what my mother raised in her acre garden.

Tom Buell and some of his friends stopped two or three times a year and kept us up on the outside news

At this point my story begins.