Feb 4^th, 1872
We held our first meeting in an Indian Lodge at Pleasant Valley.  Fastened a pen on a stick to do the writing.
Feb 5^th
Completed the first house in Stockville to put the county books in.
We had a big feast.  I killed 2 deer for my part and the Indians killed, and ate, five dogs.

Feb 7^th, 1872
Had a fearful hard winter.  Lots of cattle died.
The Indians left for the Sioux Reservation.  Good for us for we have fed sixty all winter.
Sam Watts, our County Judge, moved to Stockville, the first one.
I have the first house built in the county -  a log house 18 x 25 ft., but not living in it yet.
March 4^th, 1872
Hank Clifford starts to the Fort with two loads of meat to sell.   Montie Cliffford and I are hard at work drying buffalo meat - got about ten thousand pounds - also seven hundred toungs dried.
March 7^th
The Pawnees stole 7 Sioux ponies from our camp.
March 8^th, 1872
I start to the Fort to get horses to follow the Pawnee.  A fearful snow storm.  Owing to the storm, I did not get any help from the Fort.
March 12^th
Went hunting.  Had a fine choice at a large band of elk.  Killed a good many.
March 13^th
Montie and I started on the trail of the stolen horses.  Came up with them.  Had a fight.  Got all the horses back but one.
March 16^th, 1872
In an Indian lodge, smoked half to death.  Tired of their society.  March is half gone.  I long to see spring.  I am tired of storm after storm and suspense, ever clinging, wearing me down.  Will my loved ones ever come out here?

Pleasant Valley
Monday, March 18th, 1872
All the boys are in camp.  Hank Clifford, Dick Seymour, and John Kurbey (Kirby), our Co. Clerk, his first visit to Frontier County.
John King is here the only man on the Republican Valley.  I have traded him 2 cows for a mule and start this morning to drive the cows to his camp on the Republican Valley.  It is a fine country.  We plowed the first furrow in that splendid valley.  The buffalo will soon go and perhaps in a few years these hills and valleys will know the Indians, buffalo and us, the hunters and trappers, no more.  The plowmen will turn the grass under and cities will spring up.  Railroads will follow in our track.

20^th
I found a man lost and starving in the prairie and saved him.

March 25^th, 1872
I have just heard that Ma and Sister are in at McPherson station waiting for me to go after them.

27^th
I meet my loved ones once more.  They are tired and sick from their long trip.  We came to the Fort and stayed at Snells all night.

28^th
We start for the Medicine.  Ma is quite sick but says she will go with me if she dies on the way.
Near night we are in camp under some big elms on the Medicine.  The first white women ever in Frontier Co.  Lots of Indians come to see us.  A new life has commenced for us.

April 1^st, 1872
Wolf's Rest
We are down here in the timbers camped.  It was so windy we could not live on the hill in the house I had built.  We are out of the wind here.
We named this place Wolf's Rest.  I found a dead wolf on the spot.  He had been caught in a trap and got away with the trap on his foot and dragged it 40 miles until, worn out with life's pilgrimage dreary, laid down with trap, like one that is weary, and there rested forever.