Buffalo Jones' forty years of adventure Author:Charles Jesse Jones Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: One beautiful morning he packed his little valise, shook hands with his father, kissed his mother and baby sister good-by, and was soon speeding westward over th... more »e prairies, full of determination to succeed, and with energy to carry out whatever enterprise he might attempt. He first stopped at St. Joseph, Mo. This was early in 1866, just after the close of the great Civil War. Here he remained a few days, and then started for the wilds of the new State of Kansas. He settled in Troy, Doniphan county, where, having managed to secure a large amount of Osage orange seed, he started a nursery for the growth of hedge plants and every variety of fruit trees. In 1867 the locusts, or grasshoppers as they were erroneously called, visited the State in countless swarms, darkening the air, and in the short space of twenty-four hours every vestige of the nursery had disappeared, except the bare poles of what had been trees; and within a week they stripped them of their bark, completing absolute ruin. This disastrous raid did not discourage the indomitable Jones, however. " Try again " has ever been his motto, and in accordance with its precepts, during the winter he grafted more than 50,(XX) trees, grapevines, and other varieties of fruit. With the opening spring came the grasshoppers again, and devoured a larger portion of his year's labor; yet by hard work lie saved and sold enough to enable him to purchase a small farm of twenty acres, upon which he built a comfortable dwelling, and outhouses to carry on his business. In the year 1869 Col. Jones was married to Martha J. Walton, the daughter of a highly respected farmer, formerly of Laporte, Indiana. Mr. Jones's relations with his estimable wife have ever been of that character which proves that " marriage is not a failure." The only troubl...« less