My dad, John N. Coates, was 5 years old at the time they arrived on a flat boat -- team, wagon and all.  At Mitchell Point, after five days of boating, he said they had to get another team to help pull the wagon up the bank at the landing. This place is now raising soybeans.

   Records and deeds show that my grandfather paid a family named Pruett $125 in gold and a dog for 120 acres of ground -- including four acres of cleared land, a two-room log house, a log barn and two dug-out cisterns.

   What is now Mueller Street runs from the Jonesboro highway east, through the approximate center of the Coates property.  At that time, the road was known as Ridge Road. The Coates' property line on the east adjoined the Hitchcock property.

   The nearest railroad station was in Delaplaine, and the nearest store, Gainesville.

   My father was married in 1895 and lived in town until 1902 when he and his family moved to the old home place on the Jonesboro highway where the Fred Wulfekuhler's now live.  They told me that the old house at Seventh and Kingshighway was the last house coming out that way -- all the rest were cow pastures.