This was in the high-water days of 1851, and as the river overflowed its banks and the waters kept rising higher and higher my father concluded that it was hardly a desirable place near which to locate a home, and hitching up his team he saddled a horse and swam the stream, going on to the westward.

He finally homesteaded a tract of land on the site of the present town of Marshalltown, which he laid out, and to which he gave the name that it now bears.

This, for a time, was known as "Marshall," it being named after the town of Marshall in Michigan, but when a post-office was applied for it was discovered that there was already a post-office of that same name in the State, and so the word "town" was added, and Marshalltown it became, the names of Anson, Ansontown and Ansonville having all been thought of and rejected.

Had the name of "Ansonia" occurred at that time to my father's mind, however, I do not think that either Marshall or Marshalltown would have been its title on the map.
It was not so very long after the completion of my father's log cabin, which stood on what is now Marshall-town's main street, that I, the first white child that was born there, came into the world, the exact date of my advent being April 17th, 1852.

My brother Sturges Ransome, who is two years my senior, was born at the old home in Michigan, and I had still another brother Melville who died while I was yet a small boy, so at the time of which I write there were three babies in the house, all of them boys, and I the youngest and most troublesome of the lot.
The first real grief that came into my life was the death of my mother, which occurred when I was but seven years old.