soot." (Please note he is now 74 years old.)
On December 22, he "went to the mill this morning and buzzed out
100 pins and some tops and bottoms for my boy's boxes (he is now
teaching Thomas to make dovetailed boxes) and, feeling quite poorly,
having a hard headache, I did but little more through the day.
Near suppertime I started for the house and was taken with a
heavy chill and had about as much as I could do to get over it
but it was not thought prudent to go to the house so they made a
fire in one of the sickrooms (in the infirmary) and I stayed all
night. "
His illness didn't last long and the first part of 1860 saw him
back again at work, commenting that "choring and new requests for
repairs are made faster than I am able to adjust the old ones."
But he did make himself a new leather apron and altered his old
one for Thomas. Thomas' mother came to visit him in April and
Thomas was able to give her a dovetailed box with a slide cover
which he had made.
In May 1860 Freegift put in 33 hills of melons, with a pint of
dry ashes in the bottom of each hill, then a small shovel of
scrapings from the sheep yard, and got very tired. But then he
says "we dressed 300 poggies this morning." I!!
In June he was at the mill searching for a suitable
piece of pine tfto make a block to press the crowns of bonnets on
and began to work on it. He comments "it is a bad job, yet as it
is for Eldress Sally and Sister Naomi, it must be done." These
are not Watervliet sisters; I believe they are of Pleasant Hill,
so he is still keeping ties with these people 17 years after he
left Union Village.
One day in April he notes in his journal that Thomas was at the
river farm with the boys setting out onions so he had been
writing, completing 15 quarto pages. On June 25th he recorded
that "last evening, in attempting to cross the creek about sunset
to carry our dirty clothes to the washhouse, the plank rolled and
pitched me into the creek onto a pile of clay and stones, which
daubed me up badly and tore my trousers and hurt my right hip
arid knee. "
David Buckingham had developed a new strawberry, called the
Austen, and in July Freegift and Thomas made bc4s to pack
strawberry plants in for shipment, the largest to hold 25 plants.
By August 28 they had made 400 boxes. In the fall, Freegift
repaired 400 seed boxes and then, with Elder Daniel and Giles
Avery, buzzed out stuff for 700 more boxes. However in September
and October he was laid up with rheumatism in his left leg, but
finally able to do moderate work if he did not walk or stand very
long. (He is 75.)
On January 25, 1861 he worked on his bench and thus made a sepa-
rate working place for Thomas, who was now 13 1/2 years old and,
Freegift notes, "it is possible that he may make a first rate

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