As an article of food I can think of no fruit that is more nourishing than the pawpaw. During the season of ripening I always eat heartily of this fruit and never experienced any inconvenience from so doing. In fact it satisfies hunger when one is in need of food. In the year 1860, I was living in Southern Kansas where I assisted in laying out the town of Neo-sho Falls. We were confronted by the worst drought that was ever known in Kansas. It continued about eighteen months. The Neosho River dried up and ran no water for quite a while. No farm products had been raised in the country. Settlers were in a starving condition. A good many people left the country. Providentially there was one of the greatest pawpaw and nut crops ever known in the Neosho bottoms. In the Fall when pawpaws were ripe a great many of the settlers partly subsisted on pecan nuts and pawpaws, of which there was a great abundance. Some of us spent a good deal of our time out in the woods with our hammers cracking nuts and eating pawpaws. Many of the settlers were from the northern and eastern states and had never seen or even heard of the pawpaw. Col. Goss who laid out the town of Neo-sho Falls was first
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