The family carried all their drinking and cooking water from a Spring called "The Mercy Springs." located on an adjoining farm a half mile away from their house. Several other families carried water from this spring also. This was done for about two years when the two boys George and Robert now 15 and 20 dug their first well. They also dug a well on the South 40. These wells were 30 feet deep with plenty of soft water and were known as the best wells of soft water in Cedar County. To this day there was never a pump in them and they are as good as the day they were dug around 1871 over 100 years ago. (written in 1971)
Tully Tandy's lost his last two team of oxen after years of service and he bought horses to do his farm work. My last recollection of the oxen yokes were of being used at the wood pile for chopping blocks. They were hand made by Tandy of Hickory wood and with use and age they became tough as iron.
My Grandmother Narcissia's prize piece of furniture was a four poster corded bedstead made of maple wood handmade by Tully Tandy soon after moving to Cedar County. It was beautiful. A corded bed is a small rope woven back and forth fastened to little wooden pegs along each side . This forms a lut to hold the mattress instead of bed slats. This bed was still in use when Narcissa died in 1905.
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