Now another story from Henry Wetmore via “The Bronson Book”, recorded here just as it was written. The cabin mentioned here would have been approximately where “Marc’s” is, remembering that in this forested wilderness, the only sign of civilization was this small cluster of log cabins, the only link with other settlers… being a blazed trail in the woods and swamps where Rt. 91 would be.
“About eighty rods from our house where we first settled, John Campbell who was one of the four heads of families mentioned, built a log house and put his wife and one child, a babe, in it. Having no boards in those days for floors, split logs were used, with the split side up. These would shrink and make open places, which, added to frequent knots and other irregularities, made rough and open floors. One day Mrs. Campbell put her child, then two or three years old, in the middle of the floor and gave it a tin of bread and milk, shutting the door, went up to see my mother. On her return she thought she would just look in through a little window to see what the child was doing, as she heard the child uttering some childish words, and, behold, there lay a large yellow rattle snake, coiled almost into the child’s lap, and was licking the milk off from the child’s apron, which had dropped upon it: and the child, just at the moment the mother looked in, was patting the snake over the head with the spoon to make him stop doing so. Mrs. Campbell opened the door with a scream, and the snake went down through a crack in the floor. She took the child to our house, and my Father and M. Campbell, who soon came, turned over the logs of the floor and killed the snake. It evidently smelt the milk, and with an instinctive impression of the child’s innocence and inability to hurt him, attempted to partake of some of the child’s food.”
