A family with 9 children survives life on the Kansas prairie in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The experiences they have illustrate the joys, sorrows, hardships and everyday life of the Midwest pioneers. This faith filled series of stories is true. The eldest child was my great grandmother Alzina Pomeroy Boone.

And so Alzina Boone, widow, stepped back into teaching to support her young family. She was able to keep her children with her, thanks to her sister Sadie who stayed with them the first spring. The next year she persuaded Sadie’s beau, Park, to marry Sadie and move in with them and help with the farm as well. Most of the time she took Stanley, her oldest boy age 5, and John, age 4 with her to school while the girls stayed home with Sadie, or occasionally with her mother. She had all the worries of a mother, and a breadwinner, and a teacher. Children got sick, food got scarce, bills couldn’t be paid, but through it all, they stayed together and were glad for that.

Alzie’s story continues:

“Sadie and Park moved to his father’s farm the following autumn, 1898. I hired a girl, Mamie, to stay with me and my four children at Elizabeth Town, where I was paid $33 per month. I rented a two story house about a half mile from the school house, and close to neighbors, and my father and brothers hauled my household goods over to the new place. With my buggy and good driving pony, Kate, we thought we were well equipped for a prosperous year. But we had some exciting events, which spoiled our joy of living there, and tested our faith and courage.

I ordered some fresh hay delivered inside the barn door about the first of the first week we were there. I asked Mamie to fill the three ticks with fresh hay to be used as mattresses on the three beds. She filled the ticks during the day and let them lie on the hay pile till I came home to help carry them in. It was almost dark when we got the beds made. Our rooms were lighted with kerosene lamps.

I had put the children to bed, and they were soon asleep. Mamie and I sat on the top step of the stairway, talking over tomorrow’s plan when suddenly Ethel, the oldest girl, screamed in fright, as in a bad dream. I sprang to my feet holding the lamp in my hand and saw a dark snake about a foot long wriggling up and down her right arm, and off onto the floor. I exclaimed, “Oh Mamie, it’s a snake!”

Then she sprang to her feet with a scream and whirled me around, which motion put out the light, and without a match where we could find it . I started down the stairs for a match, but she wailed, “Don’t leave me up here!” So I commanded her to get a match. When we got the lamp lit, there was the snake darting up and down the wall from the floor. I seized a mop and stepped on one side of the bed and struck at the snake, but it vanished.

We hunted for an hour or so, but never found it. We decided it must have jumped out of a low open window beyond the foot of the bed. But it was very hard to give up looking for the snake and go to bed. A neighbor woman jokingly said next day, “I’ve heard of men having snakes in their boots, but never of women having snakes in the beds.”