My practice continued to increase and we had laid up what we thought considerable money though in fact it was very little. Shortly after this Ellis case, Mrs. Abram Looney took suddenly ill. She was the mother of John Looney the man from whom I was renting the office and house we lived in. Aunt Sally Looney was an old settler there and could talk that you could hear her at least half a mile and she was a great help in the neighborhood, especially in sickness. She would go day or night to help. I know that many was the time she came when my mother was sick and when she died she (Aunt Sally) was so good to our family. We thought of her as a mother or some very close relative. When she fell suddenly ill, I was sent for and worked very hard to save her life and had numerous consultation but to no avail.

Soon after that I purchased an eighty acre tract of land with fair improvements on it right in the edge of the village of Alda and I repaired it and built a barn and lived there and practiced from the farm until in May 1904, when I sold the practice and the farm at an increase of eight hundred dollars. I sold to a Dr. W. A. Thomas from Illinois. He came there a week or two before I gave the practice up to him and he rode night and day with me as I was a busy man in the practice. After I had been gone a year he wrote me that he had lost all his practice and did not depend on a dollar from it.

I will now give my reasons for selling out such a fine business. Ever since my wife arrived in Nebraska she had not felt well, being very nervous and had fallen away so much. She got on my nerves very much by telling me every time I came in the house how badly she was feeling. I pitied her to the bottom of my heart but I found that her complaints irked me very much. Of course, I never said a word to her about it. But when I came in the door, I was sure to hear how she was feeling. I could not blame her for telling me for who else could she tell except me? I did all I could for her but it was during this time that our second daughter, Daisy, was born and she was as small as could possible be but seem healthy except she was very nervous. The folks I had bought the farm from had gone to Oregon in the Williamette Valley and wrote us how nice it was there. I had sent several nervous women there and they had gotten better. I asked her if we had not better sell out and go there too. We talked it over and she did not like to have me sell out my business on her account. I told her that I had heard her complain so much that I was so sorry for her that I would give up my business or anything else for her health. We finally agreed to sell and go to Oregon. We sold the farm as before stated to Dr. Thomas and prepared and had a public sale. We had a sale at the home and we put up a table and had a great feast for all that were at the sale. No scarcity of food at all. Our sale footed up a good sum.

I had Arthur Harris driving and caring for my horses of which I then had a barn full and drove them very hard. Arthur was a fine horseman and could get more driving out of the horses and have them looking sleek and fat than any other man living, I think. Arthur had been paralyzed from the hips down and I had a hard time to save his life. He finally recovered so that he could walk fairly well and I hired him to drive and work for me. We raised some fine hogs and had a cow and we lived fat and fine. After the sale was over, our good friends, A. B. Fraker family, invited us to go to their home one mile west of our place to stay while making preparations to start west. I left my family there and went to Omaha with intentions to buy an automobile for our trip. The reason I had thought of taking an automobile trip was that between the time I first went to Chicago to post graduate work and the time I was going to leave for Oregon, I had made a second trip to Chicago and had been invited to stay with old Doctor Brubaker for two weeks. While I was there, I saw a lot of fine looking automobiles and had gotten the fever. Old Dr. Brubaker had one, a white steamer, I think it was called. He said he would give me a ride in it before I went home. I thought the time would never roll round for him to take me about so anxious was I to ride in an automobile. Finally he told me one morning that he was going to take me out in the auto and we went down to his garage and he had to light a gasoline generator and burn it for a time to heat the water to make steam. I thought he never in the world would get the thing ready to go. At last he announced that it was ready to go and we both climbed in and started the thing out. We drove out into Washington Park for he lived right at the edge of this large park. As we went along I noticed he kept turning one little wheel or other, usually saying, "Stop sir be God sir that was not right". Then turning another with the same expression every time. I said to myself the old fool will blow this thing up before he stops. I had not more than thought the remark that a loud report came after he had turned another little wheel and the water gage had blown out, as it was glass, and the steam just roared out. Brubaker yelled out, "WHAT A BLUNDER" and I hopped out and thought of tieing my handkerchief in a knot over the escaping steam and then I asked the Doctor for his handkerchief and did the same. This stopped it fairly well and I told the Doctor now to beat it home. We barely got to the garage, but could not roll into it on its own power.

So I went to Omaha thinking I would buy one of the large touring cars any one of which would cost me at least four thousand dollars. I looked around and as I looked, I just thought how foolish I should be to buy a machine that was not as yet very reliable and then to start west with practically no roads in some parts of the country and knowing nothing at all of machinery myself. I just quietly gave myself a good cursing for the biggest fool ever born. I decided positively against the idea. Now I could have gone by train for 35 dollars each and half fare for the children but in the emaciated condition my wife was, I really was afraid to take her over the rockies so suddenly. I went to my old friend Henry Rose who had lived near Alda and who now lived in Omaha and asked him if he would run around a little with me that day and he was glad to go with me. I went by his advice to Lininger and Metcalf employment house and bought a nice new light spring wagon and then went to Carback Company and had them to put on a canopy top with heavy canvas and screens so that we could keep the flies out when the curtain was rolled up. It proved to be a neat job and I also had a cupboard made in the back end and then I went to the tent and awning company and bought a tent and folding cots and chairs and had a small tin cooking stove made and in fact fitted the whole thing out as completely as possible for the camping trip. I then went to the stockyards and tried to buy a suitable team for the wagon but failed to find one suitable so gave that up. I had also asked the Carback Co to print in black letters on the wagon canvas the words "MY AUTOMOBILE". Then I came back to Alda and to Mr. Fraker and when wife and I went to bed we got to talking about the trip. She started to cry and I found out that she did not look on the plan with favor. I had quite a long talk before I got her satisfied that it was not so bad. I told her that it was not an ordinary camp trip but an extraordinary one as I had spent or would spend six hundred dollars to make everything the best possible and that we were not going to be anything like tramps but that we had plenty of money and we intended to spend all we wanted or needed. The effect was good and I had her quieted but way down deep in my own heart I felt just a little leery of the whole plan but did not let her know of it. I went to this man Quisenberry and bought a fine big gentle mule team and gave two hundred and seventy five dollars for them. Then Fraker told me the harness I had brought from Omaha was not good enough and he helped me trade for a good set. Yet there was a lot of things to do to be ready for the actual start. We had been at Frakers for nearly, if not altogether, three weeks. One day when he and I were out around the hay lots doing something, I remarked to Fraker that I was all but ashamed that we had stayed so long with him as we had thought it would not take that length of time to get ready. I ventured to say, "Fraker, I would like to pay you for our board." He got red in the face and said "Doctor, I have tried to treat you and your family as well as I possible could and now you offer me this insult. If you feel that way about it, you had better get going." I felt terribly bad about it and Fraker saw that it hurt me and he said, "Oh H-1, let it go Doctor, I know you meant well any way." So we let it go.

Robert Hopkins and his wife, Martha A. (Stalnaker) Hopkins, were the first of this name to settle in this district. Robert was born in Pendleton County, western Virginia, 23 December 1822, son of Lawrence B. and Mary (Jordan) Hopkins. Lawrence B. Hopkins was born in Rhode Island in 1760 and was a soldier of the Continental Army of the Revolution. Mary Jordan was a daughter of Captain William Jordan of the Continental Army who lived in Pendleton County when Mary, the mother of Robert Hopkins, was born in 1794. Martha's parents were John and Susannah (Chenoweth) Stalnaker, who came from Randolph Co., WV and settled early near Reedy, Roane County, WV.

Armstead Harper was one of three brothers that came to this area from the Clinch River section of Russell County, Virginia. He was born in 1799 and died 26 Nov 1867 and was buried with his wife in Harper Cemetery. Armstead married Rachel Bishop, born 23 Jun 1801, and she died 27 Oct 1868. They settled on the Flat Fork of Poca River where many of the Harper family still reside. They are reported to have had the first child born in the Harper settlement about 1835 and that Armstead preached the first sermon at his home in Harper District in 1837. To this union was born eleven children including Henderson Harper on 03 June 1818. Armstead's brother, Asa, taught the first school in the district in 1839.

Uriah Gandee, Sr., was born 1753, in Philadelphia, PA, and served in the Revolutionary War, 1776-1777, with the Pennsylvania Continentals. It is believed that after this period he moved to Randolph County where he became involved in a Tory uprising, was 'forgiven', became sheriff for two terms and in 1798 moved to Mason County. He was possibly the Uriah Gandee who operated a floating grist mill on the Ohio River off Buffington's Island 1800-1810. In 1833 he lived with a son on the Ohio River in Jackson County. Uriah, Jr. married Massie Hughes, on 30 Jul 1806 in Mason County and later, around 1824, settled in the area that became Gandeeville, Roane County.