During the spring and summer of 1851, Mr. Ewing and Mr. Henry Stoddard, of Dayton, Ohio, a cousin of my father, were much in St. Louis, on business connected with the estate of Major Amos Stoddard, who was of the old army, as early as the beginning of this century.  He was stationed at the village of St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana purchase, and when Lewis and Clarke made their famous expedition across the continent to the Columbia River.  Major Stoddard at that early day had purchased a small farm back of the village, of some Spaniard or Frenchman, but, as he was a bachelor, and was killed at Fort Meigs, Ohio, during the War of 1812, the title was for many years lost sight of, and the farm was covered over by other claims and by occupants.  As St. Louis began to grow, his brothers and sisters, and their descendants, concluded to look up the property.  After much and fruitless litigation, they at last retained Mr. Stoddard, of Dayton, who in turn employed Mr. Ewing, and these, after many years of labor, established the title, and in the summer of 1851 they were put in possession by the United States marshal.  The ground was laid off, the city survey extended over it, and the whole was sold in partition.  I made some purchases, and acquired an interest, which I have retained more or less ever since.

We continued to reside in St. Louis throughout the year 1851, and in the spring of 1852 I had occasion to visit Fort Leavenworth on duty, partly to inspect a lot of cattle which a Mr. Gordon, of Cass County, had contracted to deliver in New Mexico, to enable Colonel Sumner to attempt his scheme of making the soldiers in New Mexico self-supporting, by raising their own meat, and in a measure their own vegetables.  I found Fort Leavenworth then, as now, a most beautiful spot, but in the midst of a wild Indian country.  There were no whites settled in what is now the State of Kansas.  Weston, in Missouri, was the great town, and speculation in town-lots there and thereabout burnt the fingers of some of the army-officers, who wanted to plant their scanty dollars in a fruitful soil.  I rode on horseback over to Gordon’s farm, saw the cattle, concluded the bargain, and returned by way of Independence, Missouri.  At Independence I found F. X. Aubrey, a noted man of that day, who had just made a celebrated ride of six hundred miles in six days.  That spring the United States quartermaster, Major L. C. Easton, at Fort Union, New Mexico, had occasion to send some message east by a certain date, and contracted with Aubrey to carry it to the nearest post-office (then Independence, Missouri), making his compensation conditional on the time consumed.  He was supplied with a good horse, and an order on the outgoing trains for an exchange.  Though the whole route was infested with hostile Indians, and not a house on it, Aubrey started alone with his rifle.  He was fortunate in meeting several outward-bound trains, and there, by made frequent changes of horses,