Of the eight boys in my family, four, including myself, the youngest, served in the Civil War. I was the seventh son in succession, so some of the neighbors insisted on calling me "Docî, saying that the seventh son should be a doctor. At home I was always called Orlando.
    Isaac Fletcher, my father's father, moved to Canada soon after the War of the Revolution, when my father was two years old.
    In 1835 my father moved from Canada to Indiana and bought a wild tract of some 320 acres of heavily timbered land six miles east of Martinsville, and five miles north of Morgantown, in Morgan County.
    On this land we all grew up. In about twenty years my father and the older boys cleared the timber off of about 150 acres, and after I became old enough to work, the timber was taken from 60 acres more, so we had one of the best farms in the neighborhood; approximately 210 acres on which we raised crops. Our main crop was corn with which we raised and fattened hogs. We sold from 125 to 150 each fall, to buyers from Cincinnati, Ohio. After buying all they could in the neighborhood, they drove them over the dirt roads to Cincinnati, 125 miles distant.
    We also needed corn to feed our workhorses and mules, and we needed ten or twelve cows and one or two yoke of oxen.
    We raised oats to feed all kinds of growing stock and work animals. We grew wheat that we hauled to a mill run by waterpower on White River, about eight miles from the farm. The mill ground the wheat into flour, taking every sixth bushel for grinding, leaving the other five for us. We used quantities of meal, made from shelled corn, which was taken to a small stream mill about three miles away; the mill took one bushel of five. Some years we had a small surplus of wheat. This we hauled to Madison, ninety miles away on the Ohio River, and we got about fifty cents a bushel. There were no railroads in that part of Indiana in those days and it took six days to make the trip. Later a railroad was built from Cincinnati to Indianapolis through Franklin, seventeen miles east. Then we raised more wheat as we could go to Franklin and back the same day. Of course we raised all kinds of     vegetables and melons galore. Father, in the early part of the year, also planted an orchard of about three acres from which we had all kinds of fruit: apples, peaches, pears etc.
    We had no farm machinery in those days. All cultivation of crops was done with one-horse hand plows and the wheat was cut and tied in bundles by hand. The grain was then threshed out, mostly by hand on the barn floor.
    It was not until I was 15 years old that the reapers, threshers and mowers came into use, drawn by horses. My father bought eighty acres more from a neighbor adjoining, making a farm of four hundred acres. On this tract and all of the other timberland on the place, we cut out all the brush and small trees leaving only the best standing: the poplar, oaks, ash and hard maple. The ground was thoroughly cleaned, harrowed and seeded with grass between the trees, and the Fletcher wooded pastures were the talk of the county round about.
    These wooded pastures provided for not only all the other animals on the place but also for 125 to 150 head of sheep. On one corner of one of these wooded pastures the trees were nearly all hard or sugar maples, and every year about the last of February or the 1st of March when it began to thaw and the sap would begin run up the trees. We tapped the trees and ran the sap in buckets or other receptacles and gather it up mornings and evenings in barrels and haul it to camp where would boil it down, making it into maple syrup or sugar. Thus we not only provided the family with sugar and syrup for the year but also had some to sell, which was always in demand.
    When the family entered upon the land Father had purchased, there was no other family within four miles. After selecting the place to put up the houses, they went to work and put up a log house about 16 by 20 feet, which they lived in for a year or so until they could complete a much larger one, close up in front of the other one. Then the first house was used as a kitchen, and fireplaces were built in both.
    There were no stoves in those days, so every family cooked with the fireplace's crane. It had a number of long and short hooks, on which the kettles and pots were hung and swung back over the fire. The bread, biscuits and corn bread were baked in what we called Dutch ovens, which were made of heavy iron, with iron tops. Live coals from the fire were placed under the oven. After the dough was placed in the oven the lid was put on and also covered with live coals.
    One end of the large house was partitioned off and divided into two bedrooms, one bed in the large living room where Father and Mother slept; under that was a trundle bed that was pulled out at night for the small kiddies and pushed back in the morning when the kids got up. Upstairs were two large bedrooms, with two beds each for the older boys. A large wide porch ran the full length of the house, where we took most of our meals the year round. We also had a good cellar under the house where we kept a large supply of fruits, vegetables and all kinds of eatables. A smoke house also stood in the back yard. We butchered from a dozen to fifteen head of the smaller fat hogs each year and one or two fat steers. After our yearís supply of pork was butchered, the hems and shoulders were smoked.
    Our family, at this time, was a large one. The two oldest, William and Horatio, were half brothers, making all told thirteen members.
    Just below the house ran a small creek, on the bank of the creek was a large spring. We cut down the bank and built a large springhouse and ran all the water from the spring through the house. We laid a wide, strong plank down the center and arranged the floor so that a depth of water from four inches to a foot could be maintained in different places. When the milk was strained and put in crocks and jars it was kept in the cool spring water until it was used. This farm where I grew up was twenty to twenty five years in the making. All these years our living expenses were very small as all food, clothing etc. were made or raised on the farm.
    The sheep were sheared every spring, and the wool was made into rolls and twisted into yarn with spinning wheels, mostly by the younger boys. A loom was erected in one of the rooms where the thread or yarn was woven into cloth from which our clothing was made. Every year a tailor was employed who cut out and fitted our clothing. He also looked after the making of the clothes, mostly done by the women of the neighborhood. There were no sewing machines in those days; all sewing was done by hand. Even our hats and caps were made at home. Most every house had hat blocks of different sizes over which the hats could be made and pressed.
    In his younger days Father had worked in a tanning yard for a while, so he established a tanning yard down on the little creek, where we tanned all the leather necessary for our foot wear and for harnesses for the work animals, and for many other things. Many people from miles around would bring their hides to us for tanning. For the tanning we would receive one half of the leather made from the hides or, as was often the case, they would prefer to pay one half of the market price of the leather in cash.
    We always had a good supply of leather on hand and every fall we would employ a shoemaker who would come to the house and make a pair of boots, patch and mend all the old ones for each of us, and so you see it was not necessary to spend but little money at the stores in town. Tea, coffee, calico for summer dresses and gingham for aprons and some bonnets for winter for Mother and my sister Hattie was about all we needed to buy. We planted an area or two of flax most every year, for the linen for towels and table cloths, as well as clothes for much of our summer wear. The oldest boy of the family, Gardner, early on became quite expert at weaving this linen, and made quite a few plaid garments for girl friends in the neighborhood, from which they made their best winter dresses.
    There were no schools for a number of years. Mother was a schoolteacher before her marriage, so she gathered the children around the large fireplace after supper and taught them. Our nearest neighbors, named Lawrence, were from New England and were also very anxious that their children should be taught. They had two boys and one girl, and one winter we went to their home where Mrs. Lawrence taught the children of both families for three months. The following winter, the Lawrence boys and girls came to our house and Mother turned our sitting room into a schoolroom.
    By the following winter a log schoolhouse had been built and although this was three miles distant my parents decided to send us there. The district was organized, three trustees selected, but no money was provided to pay the teachers, so it was necessary to pay each one that came to school. They finally found a middle-aged man in an adjoining county, by the name of Peter McCick, who came to teach for three months at a salary of $20 a month, with board at the parents of the scholars. In order to pay the teacher, a charge of a dollar for the smaller children, $1.50 for the older ones was collected, and believe me, it was quite a job to attend school so far away. But as there were no girls in the family, at this time, at least one of the older boys always worked in the kitchen to help Mother, by turns, a week or so about. So while we went to school the schedule was as follows: my brother Isaac, who was considered to be the best cook, would get up about 4 o'clock in the morning and begin breakfast, and at about five would wake up four of the other boys who would go to the barn, feed all stock and milk the cows.
    By the time they were through, breakfast was ready, and lunch for five put up, and by daylight we were on our way to school. The two oldest boys would generally take the lunch basket, the two next oldest would take me, holding my hands. And many of those cold, wintry mornings we would be walking on the snow a large part of the time. My little feet would hardly touch the ground for eight or ten steps at a time.
    The opening school day, as was the custom, the trustees came. Rules for governing the children were written out, dictated mostly by the trustees, read to those in attendance, and tacked up on the wall for future reference.
    I well remember the first day of school, as this was the first day of school we had ever attended, and the trustees had stopped on the way, cut several switches, stood them up in one corner of the schoolroom, and told the teacher that they expected him to use them.
    For seats, small sassafras trees had been cut down, cut in different lengths, about eight to twelve feet, split in halves to which legs were attached. The tops were smoothed off and the benches were set along the sides of the schoolroom, for the girls on one side and the boys on the other. No backs were put on the seats, or rather the benches, and to sit six to seven hours a day on these benches, with no backs, was, I think, the hardest proposition the younger scholars ever encountered, with only a spelling book to look at and study. In fact, Webster's old Blue back spelling book was all the book we had for the first two or three terms, from which we learned to spell most all the words in use, but also to read, as the spelling book contained a number of reading lessons.
    After one had learned to spell and read everything in the book correctly, we were permitted to take up writing and arithmetic. When the log school was built, one log on each side of the room was left out of the wall, and replaced with window glass to give light. Under this a couple of wide planks were put up for us to learn to write on. This was before stock pens were in use, and all writing was done with quill pens, made really from goose quills, and the teacher would put in much time making pens for the younger scholars, the older ones having to make their own.
    In working out arithmetic examples, we used a piece of slate that was cut 12 or 13 inches wide and 14 to 16 inches long, and neatly framed, upon which we did all our figuring. When the slate became full we could clean it off and begin again.
    We went to this school for two or three winters. In the meantime the legislature had passed a new school law, which permitted school districts to go into debt to build schoolhouses and levy a tax for the expense of maintaining the schools. Under this law a new schoolhouse was built about a mile from our house which made it much more convenient for us.
    Steel pens came into use, and the McGuffy Reader, first, second, third, fourth and fifth grade, which was a great improvement for the boys and girls starting school. In this schoolhouse I obtained my somewhat limited education, and the old spelling book always stood me in good hand, and I was one of the best spellers in the school.
    Every day, just before noon recess and just before closing for the day, several classes were lined up, and the teacher gave the word to be spelled to the student at the head of the class first, and if he or she did not spell it correctly, it was passed to the next and the next. The one that spelled the word correctly went to the head of the class. If no one spelled the word right the one at the head of the class went down to the foot, and if anyone down the line missed a word, and one below spelled the word correctly, that one would go up the line and take his or her place above the one that missed. This created considerable rivalry, as one very much hated to be sent down the line.
    The rivalry was keenest on the last day of school when a present was given to the one that stood at the head of the class. I had stood at the head of the class and received the present for two terms. At the end of the next term at the last spelling bout, one of the girls, Ruth Cathcart, a very bright Irish girl a year or so younger than I was, whispered to me, asking if would I let her go ahead of me this time, since I was at the head of the class last term. As I thought a great deal of her, I fell for it, of course, and misspelled a word on purpose which she spelled correctly and went above me and got the present.
    Teachers were required to maintain strict order, and any infraction of the rules would be punished, most generally with a switch, sometimes by making the culprit stand up on the floor near the teacher's desk for a time, or kept in the schoolroom during recess. Another mode of punishment for the younger boys was to put a sunbonnet on his head and set him over on the side, between two of the girls. This the small boys generally hated worst of all.
    Most people in our community, with the exception of a few Easterners, came from the slave states just south of the River, generally spoken of as the poor whites, where there were no schools maintained, and the people grew up in ignorance. As a sample I will refer to a talk I heard one morning before Sunday school opened. Eighteen or twenty boys were out in front of the house listening to a boy of about fourteen, who had the week before gone with his father to visit an uncle who lived some ninety miles west. It took them three days to drive to his uncles, three days to drive back home, and they remained with the uncle one day. After the boy had told of the wonderful trip, what he saw and the towns they had gone through, he wound up his narrative by saying:
    ìI tell you what boys, if this world is as big east as it is west, it's a mighty big world.î This boy's father and could neither read nor write and seemed to care little whether their children went to school or not, and this was the case with half the community. And yet with all the handicaps in getting an education, my older brothers, largely through their own efforts and persistence became quite well educated. Four of them became good schoolteachers.
    In addition to my fatherís farm operation, he was also minister of the Free Will Baptist persuasion, and largely through his efforts, several churches more were built in the surrounding county, one about five miles from the farm.
    But after our new schoolhouse was built, we went to church and Sunday school there, and Sunday was religiously observed, Sunday School at nine AM and sermon at eleven, and in the afternoon at 3:30 or at night. To all of these services, old and young, we were expected to be there on time, or it was liable to cause us trouble. In fact, religion was taken very much more seriously in those days than today, and no fooling around on Sunday. One was looked upon as the better Christian, the more solemn one could look on that day. I remember once, while the Congregation was gathering, one of the boys happened to let out a whistle and one of the pious members took him to task at once, for whistling on the Sabbath Day.
    In those days, traveling was generally on horseback or on foot, so one would often see a man in the saddle, his wife behind him, and perhaps a small child 'in his arms, thus three on one horse, going to church. Father, being a minister, was often called upon to perform marriage services, and if they were not too far away he would take one of the smaller boys behind him on his horse. I went with him a to good many weddings that way. Usually the wedding would take place at noon. After the wedding dinner the young men and girls would pair off, mount their horses, and escort the new married couple to the home of the bridegroom, where an elaborate wedding supper would be served. The fee for performing the marriage service in those days was fixed by law at $1.00. Some of the bridegrooms, however, would hand the minister more.
    I heard one minister who, when asked by the bridegroom how much his services were worth, replied, "OK, what do you think your bride is worth?"
    The bridegroom handed him $10.00.
    While marriages were always a solemn occasion with the pious, there was almost always an element of the younger that delighted in causing a lot of fun on such occasions, the same at baptisms, which took place in the creek nearby.  I remember on one occasion while the congregation was in on the banks of the creek, someone picked up a small dog and after going through some kind of rigmarole, similar to the baptismal services, he doused the dog into the water.
    There was always steady work on the farm, and it was steady, for when it rained, snowed or there was bad weather, there was work in the barn. Yet with the steady work there was much of a social character going on in the neighborhood. All of the young people would gather, and besides cutting up a lot of wood or shucking a lot of corn, the boys and girls would have much fun and frolic during these gatherings. All of the families had orchards, and fruit was dried for summer use, and to sell. The young folks would gather at neighboring houses and peel and prepare the apples, peaches and other fruits for drying.
    During the winter there was much going on at the schoolhouse, singing lessons or spelling bees. Often a nearby school would come and spell against ours, so gatherings were quite frequent, and with all our steady work, life was not as dull as one would imagine. There was always something going on to drive dull cares away.
    My education ended with the winter when I was just past fifteen, with the understanding that in a couple of years or so, I would be sent to the Baptist College at Franklin, where some of my older brothers had been sent previously. But the war coming on when it did prevented that. I was taken from school, because four of my older brothers were away teaching school, and I was needed at home.
    During my last winter at school I had agreed to furnish the wood needed for the term, and before school began, I cut the wood in cord lengths and hauled it to the schoolhouse. When school began I took my ax along, and during recess I would cut it into stove lengths, and the trustees paid me $11.50. I sure felt rich and I went into town and got it changed into 25-cent pieces, then I would count them out and stack them up. In fact it was the first money I had ever had that I could call my own, and I am sure I enjoyed it more than any money I have ever had since.