My Genealogy Hound

BUCK, FRED L. farmer and stock raiser, Sec. 36, P.O. Fielden, Jersey County, was born in Hanover, Germany, 1822, living in his mother country till he was 15 years of age, which was in 1837; at so young an age he was determined to go West, where there was a better chance for a young man. Getting permission of his parents, he came across the ocean, landing at Baltimore, and made his way to St. Louis, and hired as waiter boy in the Missouri hotel, remaining for six months; the man he hired to ran off and did not pay him. He was left with nothing; someone stealing his shoes and coat. He then worked for twenty-five cents per hour on the water docks till he had money enough to buy a pair of shoes. He then received the position of cabin boy on a steamboat; followed the river for nine years as cabin boy and second cook. Leaving the river he engaged in keeping a saloon in partnership with another man; sold out in a short time, and clerked in the saloon, and working in a distillery, which he followed for four years. He then, in 1850, went with a party to California, going by overland route, which took them one hundred and forty days. When he arrived at his destination he had the small sum of fifty cents; having no rations, and meals were one dollar, three of them together bought one pound of cheese for one dollar and ten cents, and one loaf of bread for fifty cents; that was the way he got his first meal in California. He sold one of his shirts to get some money to buy provisions. His partner had an old pick and spade to go to work with, and a friend that came over with him bought him a rocker to clean the gold. They made one thousand dollars in the next five months. Staying in California for two years, he returned to St. Louis with $1,400, and clerked with the same man that he did before, staying two years. Then bought land in Jersey County and farmed. Sold out and bought in Greene County, where he now lives, farm contains 345 acres, he purchased in 1865. He was married in 1856 to Caroline Horseman, who was born in 1835. Their union was blessed with sixteen children, eight of which are living: Matilda, Richard, Nettie, Seagle, Henry, Frederic, Lula, and Mary.