Waterloo Daily Courier in Iowa (Thursday, August 29, 1907.) A good many years ago when comrade Lyman Chapin was a youngster in his teens some one made him a present of a calf. And then he bought another calf for which he paid a trifle more than a song. The two calves grew up to be a yoke of oxen.
That’s the way calves frequently did in those days. When these oxen were about four years old they were well “broke”.
They weighed nearly two tons and they were the most powerful yoke of cattle on the Wapsie. In 1854, Lyman sold the oxen and with the money he bought a quarter section of land in the Fremont township at $1.25 an acre. Comrade Chapin still owns that farm; it is one of the most valuable farms on the Wapsie and it would take two-thirds of the original cost of the farm to buy one acre of it now.
