Poem—A Farm in the West, written in 1855 at West Laurens

Poem—A Farm in the West
By Deliah Tucker in 1855 at West Laurens

A Farm in the West

The following poem was written by Mrs. Deliah Tucker of West Laurens and published in the Oneonta Herald of February 17, 1855, it being related that during that year 23 persons left West Laurens to settle in the west:

To the west, to the west, cry the youth of our land

To the west, to the west, cries the middle aged man

To the west, says the aged, I'll go if I can

And get me a farm in the west.

There is wealth in the west, in abundance I know

For all who have been there tell me 'tis so

I have made up my mind, I have resolved I will go

And get me a farm in the west.

You may talk of privation and try me to scare

A pioneer's life I'm determined to bear

For muds and bad roads I never shall care

When I get me a farm in the west.

They say I must labor, they say I must toil

To cut down the bushes and break up the soil

But from honest hard labor, I'll never recoil

When tilling my farm in the west.

Then farewell to the land where my kindred now dwell

My farm (if I have one) I'll hasten to sell

So fine are the stories the emigrants tell

Of the farms that lie in the west.

I will build me a cabin some ten feet or more

With bark for a cover and dirt for the floor,

Where sweetly I'll sleep when my day's work is o'er

On my fine new farm in the west.

So I'll leave old Otsego, whose hills are so steep

Fit only to pasture the cows and the sheep

I'll go for the prairies, where such crops I'll reap

As only are seen in the west.