"So you see pioneer life is not all sunshine. It has a great many black clouds."

Those are the words of an old woman remembering her early life as a pioneer. She begins:

I was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina, February 26, 1825. When I was about six years old my father emigrated to Richmond, Indiana.

Her family continually move to stay on the frontier, despite its hardships and dangers. She never explains why so we never learn why they left Wilkes, which could hardly have been overcrowded at that time. Eventually she ends up in Iowa. It's an account worth reading. Here is a taste of it:

On the following April the Black Hawk War broke out, and some of our neighbors were killed near us, but we were providentially spared. While the war was raging at its hottest my mother urged my father to go to Jacksonville, the county seat of Morgan County, Illinois, and get his brother, which is old Uncle Johnny Welch of this place, to come and take us down to Jacksonville where he lived.