John Moody

John Moody formerly of Coe Town but now Port Byron. Feb 11, 1916.

We came here direct from Lincolnshire, England 1854--from the town of Boston, Eng.,-- landed at New York; went by boat from Buffalo to Dunkirk, N. Y. and then by rail here. When we got to Colona, Ill., they were putting in a bridge and we could go no farther, so they got word to Russell of Zuma Center and he came with an ox team and got us. We crossed Rock river at the Cleveland ferry, and on across the Bottoms. I was ten years old at the time.

I served in the war three years and was with Grant until after the siege of Vicksburg and then was with Steele at Little Rock and the Red River Expedition. I was in the same regiment that William Ziegler was but not in the same Company.

My wife was a Cordova girl--Mary C. Drennan. There was thirty-one days difference in our ages and she was always thirty-one days ahead of me. We were twenty-one years apiece when we got married. We had our Golden Wedding anniversary Nov. 30, 1915, and still getting on.

One time while we were living up on the 'Docia, Enoch Adams had a sale. The indians used to come to the 'Docia to trap muskrats and other things, and a lot of them came to this sale. An indian boy would shoot at a mark with his bow and arrow and get a nickle for hitting it. He would shout and dance every time he hit it, but when he finally missed, he bent over, crestfallen, and slunk away out of sight and we didn't see him again. He seemed very much ashamed to have missed.

E. P. Feaster was the auctioneer, and got the crowd wound up as an auctioneer does when one of the indians started to imitate him. Feaster was standing in a wagon; the indian got on a stump and had a couple of ears of corn in his hand and commenced: "la, la, ye, ye, etc. going through the motions of auctioneering just like Mr. Feaster. The whole crowd went to the indian.

We lived within a mile of where the sale was. My wife was terribly afraid of indians. One time I was plowing corn. We had only one child then, and the indians came to our house. The squaws carried their papooses on their back, and had skinning knives. I went to the house and found it was barricaded, front and back. I have never seen anyone so scared as my wife was--terribly scared. An indian said to me: "White squaw afraid. Indian no hurt". He asked for some tobacco and I gave him some. We gave them bacon and some other things, and they kept coming back time and again, but I finally told them they couldn't get anything more and they musn't come back, so they staid away.

They were Commanchies I believe. They trapped muskrats and other things. This was the last season they came here--and that was forty-nine years ago--1867.