Childhood

The family moved to Brown County, Indiana, but not intact. With mother Catherine gone decisions had to be made on what to do with seven children. Lena, Amasa, and Lydia were old enough to stay with their father and help out, but the others would have to be raised by other family members.

The youngest, baby David, would go to live with Grandfather and Grandmother Hochstetler "until I was able to help father, at about age nine or ten. "Grandpa and Grandma gave me a wonderful home, treated me like their own child."



Annan and Fanny would be taken by an aunt and uncle who lived in Ohio, a substantial distance by buggy. David would have ample opportunity to spend time with his oldest siblings and his father, but never again would all the children live together.

David remembered a happy childhood; he had cousins nearby to play with, sons of his Uncles Levi, Sam, and Joe. While they didn't have "boughten" toys they had much to play with. David's grandfather once made David a sled, for instance.

One of his closest cousin friends was Elmer. "Elmer had a sharp pocket knife that he was always using to carve with. He once carved sticks into play horses," David shared. "When I tried to carve a horse I realized Elmer was much better at carving than I was." As Elmer grew his talent with wood grew. He eventually made his own wagon, and as an adult was a carpenter.

"I went to school in Brown County and had different winters and different teachers there. I remember one of the last ones was Charles Campbell."

"When we were old enough we went back to Father. I, being the youngest, was the last to return to the home." The home had one large room downstairs, one upstairs. "It had been a storebuilding. There was enough room upstairs for all of us children. Me being the youngest, I got to sleep with Dad downstairs. We lived in that house a long time."

A child younger than eight or nine would carry drinking water to the field, collect eggs, and do other chores. In the summer we'd wrap gunny sacks around the jugs to keep them cold on the way to the field.

I started to help milk the cows when I was too small to hold the bucket betwen my legs. I would hold a cup in one hand and milk the cow with the other, then empty the cup into the bucket. 

One day David was driving the cows up a grade in one of the pastures, and he noticed two cows, a large red and white one and a little black one. They were walking next to each other, and he noticed their tails swishing back and forth. "I'll just tie those two cows' tails together," he thought. He assumed they would "push out their bodies in the back parts," but instead they began to walk away from each other. Since the knot had been tied in a "hard knot" the harder the cows pulled away from each other the tighter the knot got. Something had to give. Since one cow was bigger than the other, one cow went back to the barn with two tails and the other didn't have one.

"It was the spring of the year and the flies were really bad, eating on the cows, including those bad flies with the short stickers, that suck the blood out.

"That evening my sisters Fanny and Lydia and I were milking the cows. We had so many cows that it took three of us to milk them. It was after dark, and I heard one of my sisters say to the other 'Something's happened to this cow's tail. She don't swish too good.'

"I kept myself real still and didn't say a word. And I didn't say anything to anybody until after we had left Indiana." The family remained in Indiana fro another six years.

"Eventually Grandpa and Grand moved to the north part of Indiana, so Uncle Sam and Uncle Joe moved to Brown County and Uncle Levi moved to Howard County, Indiana."