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420
occupation of seamstress at the same price, fifty cents a day, doing such work for the Bracketts, Mavericks, Nat Lewis, Dignowity and other citizens here at the time who could afford such luxury.
With such accumulations as they could make above expenses of maintenance, my father acquired a yoke of steers and an old wagon, which he used in hauling hay, cut with a scythe blade, and selling to the government for the use of the soldiers then stationed here. Meantime he bought a lot on Main Avenue, then Acequa Street, for which he paid $50, and erected a log cabin with a tullie roof, and began to live at home. As time went on he began buying cows, and trading with the Indians for hides they brought in, which he sold to Mr. Gilbeau,. "the local hide dealer." After accumulating more cows than could be accommodated in the village, he acquired land at the head of the river, where Alamo Heights is now, and went back into the hay business for the government. In 1852 a colony of relations was made up with whom be went down to the Gallinas (Prairie Chicken's Paradise), where he followed the cattle business, remaining there after all the balance of the colony had dispersed except himself and his only neighbor, Simon Rieder; and at which place, the Fest ranch, I was born on the 9th day of May, 1856. He stayed there until 1859, and then moved down on the Atascosa Creek, two miles east of Pleasanton, which is called until yet "The Fest Ranch," where we lived all during the Confederate War, father having become a member of Captain Tom's company of Indian scouts, and remained with it until the war broke up, while we had to get along as best we could in his absence. The family consisted of mother, six children and two orphans father was raising. The children large enough to work, engaged in enlarging the little field father had begun to open up before entering the service, each one doing his bit. The family ran the ranch, cultivated the land, harvested the crops and cared for the