Mather sold these two places to Barnard and Windsor and father bought
the places of them, and moved into the Mather house. Father talked, from
an early day, that when he got able to build a house, he would like to
build it of brick or stone. He said if he had stone, he could build a
house for himself. I have no doubt that he would have built his house
himself, if he had had the stone, as old as he was, when he got the
money to do it with.
He thought himself quite a stone mason, at least he thought he could lay
a stone wall as strong as any one. I stated that I had seen where he had
built stone walls. The walls I had reference to then were walls for
fence. I saw where he had built one large out door stone cellar and
arched it over with stone; I also saw where he had built a smaller one,
that opened into what was styled a cellar kitchen. He also built the
three walls of the kitchen, on the back side and two ends, of stone; the
front of the house being wood.
[Image: HOUSE BUILT 1854.]
The practice of laying stone, in his early life, made him want to build
him a stone house in Michigan. If he had settled in another part of
Michigan, he might have done it; but he found that stone were hard to get
here, being too far away.
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