In the year 1843, the Hon. Samuel Wilkeson, of Buffalo—since deceased—communicated to the American Pioneer, a series of papers entitled "Early Recollections of the West." They present a graphic, yet painful picture of the perils, hardships and sufferings attendant on back-woods life in the midst of the aboriginal foresters. His father's family was one of twenty that removed from Carlisle and the adjacent towns, to the western part of Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1784. He pays the following tribute to the industry, perseverance and pious efforts of the mothers of the band:

The labor of all the settlers was greatly interrupted by the Indian war. Although the older settlers had some sheep, yet their increase was slow, as the country abounded in wolves. It was therefore the work of time to secure a supply of wool. Deerskin was a substitute for cloth for men and boys, but not for women and girls, although they were sometimes compelled to resort to it. The women spun, and generally wove all the cloth for their families, and when the wife was feeble, and had a large family, her utmost efforts could not enable her to provide them with anything like comfortable clothing. The wonder is, and I shall never cease to wonder, that they did not sink under their burthens. Their patient endurance of these accumulated hardships did not arise from a slavish servility, or insensibility to their rights and comforts. They justly appreciated their situation, and nobly encountered the difficulties which could not be avoided.

Possessing all the affections of the wife, the tenderness of the mother, and the sympathies of the woman, their tears flowed freely for others' griefs, while they bore their own with a fortitude which none but a woman could exercise. The entire education of her children devolved on the mother, and notwithstanding the difficulties to be encountered, she did not allow them to grow up wholly without instruction; but amidst all her numerous cares taught them to read, and instructed them in the principles of Christianity. To accomplish this, under the circumstances, was no easy task. The exciting influences which surrounded them, made the boys restless under restraint. Familiarized as they were to hardships from the cradle, and daily listening to stories of Indian massacres and depredations, and to the heroic exploits of some neighboring pioneer, who had taken an Indian scalp, or by some daring effort saved his own, ignorant of the sports and toys with which children in other circumstances are wont to be amused, no wonder they desired to emulate the soldier, or engage in the scarcely less exciting adventures of the hunter. Yet even many of these boys were subdued by the faithfulness of the mother, who labored to bring them up in the fear of God.