In Days of Yore, by Eva Paul Leigh and Grace Paul Hendricks

Introduction: We have been urged by friends and some relatives to write down some of the things as they were long ago.

Some of the following are tales told by our parents and some we really experienced. To begin with, we are of real pioneer stock as our Father, George W. Paul, came to Idaho by pack train in 1860 and Mother, Agnes A. Shipley, came by wagon train in 1864.

Father was born in Erie City, Penn. On February 22, 1837. He had a twin sister, Maria.

When they were a little over three months old their mother passed away. The father, Samuel Paul, who was Captain of a ship on Lake Erie, gave the care of the babies to two of his maiden sisters.

After several years Samuel remarried and he and his second wife took Maria to live with them. But the sister who had raised George had taught him that his father had done very wrong when re remarried so he would not have anything to do with them. Which was a sad mistake for in so doing he cheated himself out of the mothers love he might have had. The step-mother was a very good woman and was a wonderful mother to Maria.

One of the amusing tales Father used to tell was how he learned to eat tomatoes. Almost everyone grew them in their yards for ornaments. At that time they called them Love Apples and thought them to be poison. They were small and a bright red. They were so pretty and looked so good one day Father risked his life and ate one of them. The next day when he found he was still alive with no harmful results he ate some more. He kept on eating them until one day Maria caught him at it and told their Aunt. He then received a very sound whipping and was given a dose of epicac (?) and told never to eat another one because they were poison and would kill him. Although he tried his best to convince them, they were not for he had been eating them for some time, they would not believe him. However he kept eating them as often as he could without being caught. Not long afterward a younger Aunt was visiting in the Southern States and learned that many folks down there were eating the love apples. She learned to eat them and liked them. When she returned she told the rest of the family about it, but she and George were the only ones who would dare to eat them.

Father always said that the worst whipping he was ever given was by a gander. The mother goose had some little goslings and he was teasing her by pretending that he was going to pick one up. She would run at him and hiss. That was fun, but the gander came up behind and caught him by the pants with his bill and gave him a good pounding with his wings. When he managed to get loose from the gander he was happy to go away and leave the geese alone after that.

George finished the public schools of Erie City and decided he wanted to be a lawyer. So Started to Law School but ran out of funds in his last year and rather than use the scholarship his Father had at the school he quit and started selling insurance. He worked mostly in the Southern States. Perhaps Georgia. He was staying with a friend in the South.

At times he would tell of his first experience of shooting a deer. One morning before breakfast he looked out of the door and there was a nice buck right in the yard. He got a gun and shot it and it dropped. Not knowing he needed a knife to finish it off he ran to it and when it started to get up he jumped on it and caught it by the horns calling for his friend. By the time the friend arrived the deer had Father just about undressed and had inflicted a number of cuts and bruises on his body with it's sharp hooves. George had learned another lesson.

George continued to sell insurance until the early spring of 1860. The gold rush was on in the west and he decided to go to California and make a fortune.

He went to Pittsburg, Penn. and was staying at a Hotel getting ready to go by boat. They were to travel on the Alleghaney to the Ohio, then to the Mississippi as far as they could go. A few days before they were ready to leave he was taken ill with a very high fever. The doctor provided a nurse to take care of him, this nurse had a small daughter. His fever was so high he thought he just had to have a drink of cold water. But in that day it was thought to be very dangerous to give a fever patient anything cold to drink so they would not let him have any. One day the nurse had to go out for a few minutes and left the little girl with him telling her to get him anything he wanted. He knew there was a pitcher of ice water in a room across the hall and he sent the little girl after it. The pitcher contained about one quart and he was just draining the last drop when the nurse returned. She was horrified and told him he would surly die. His answer was “If so I will die happy”. It did give him cramps however and in a short time he was well broken out with the measles. As in the case of the love apples George was a few steps ahead of his time.