This is an excerpt from Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann, Chapter Nineteen, “College and Financial Difficulties Emma and the Austins, 1872–1878,” pp. 237–243.
It continued to be difficult to make money in Eldred. Henry needed his sons’ help with farming, his only source of income. But sons Ell and Lon (ages twenty-three and twenty-one) didn’t like working for their father.
Around 1878 Ell and Lon headed 1,343 miles west to Kansas, which offered work on railroads, ranches, stores, and farms.
Lon and Ell worked some in Solomon City (now Solomon), Kansas. When the townsfolk objected to the whole street being taken up by cattle during the cattle drive, Abilene, Kansas, ten miles to the east, became the major shipping center for cattle and produce.
(In 1871 James Butler Hickok, the Austins’ fifth cousin had been marshal in Abilene. James B., “Wild Bill” as he was known, had died in the Dakota Territory, in 1876. It is doubtful the Austin brothers even knew they were related.)
