Austin Sweet Sr.

In these blogs, we have often seen the name of Austin Sweet Sr., father of Richard Morgan Sweet, who married Cora Isabelle Tapscott of Clark County, Illinois. Austin Sr., was a veterinarian and farm owner. Here is a story about Austin and two of his grandchildren, Carrie and Mary (“Merrie”) Lowry as told by Mary in her book, The Merry Cricket.

From The Merry Cricket.

As one of the most sought-after veterinarians in the entire countryside, [Grampa Sweet's] practice often took him to some spot near our farm, always to our delight. However, as he had a large farm of his own to work when not out taking care of sick livestock, he could seldom stay long.

Jauntily climbing down from the half-cart, half-buggy in which he made his professional calls, he greeted us all cheerily and gave mother a warm embrace.

This day grampa was in more of a hurry than usual to get back to his farm. His bull, a huge and vicious animal that he kept on a chain in the barn, had been acting up that morning. He was the only one who could do anything with it.

Reluctant to see him go, we all walked out to the road with him. Then, just as he was about to slap his horse with the reins as a signal for it to start rambling off, he suddenly sat up straight, looked at Carrie and me, rubbed his chin thoughtfully and asked if Carrie and I couldn’t go home with him and stay over. We clamored so eagerly mother smilingly consented.

This was a treat, and to make it still more of a treat, grampa let Carrie take the reins and drive us. In truth, the horse knew the way better than Carrie. But he was an amiable animal. Knowing that grampa must have turned the reins over to one of us girls, and sensing that it might be fun to step lively, he picked up his feet and whisked us home smartly.

There were always things to look forward to at grampa’s. There would be wonderful things to eat which pretty Gramma Sweet would prepare especially to delight us. There were strange books to browse over in grampa’s cluttered little office, treatises on animal husbandry with fascinating pictures of sick cows and spavined horses.

And there would be things which grampa would think up for us to do which were always exciting, as the expedition on which he took us that night after dinner.

“Come girls,” he said, when it was dark, “you can help me, I think. This is a good night for it. There’s been a lot of rain lately and the ponds are swollen. Then he filled his lantern, lit it, found a big corn knife, winked at us conspiratorially, and told us to follow him.

We trotted to keep up with him as he walked briskly to a marshy pond not too far from the house. It was a noisy night: the frogs were making such a din we could hardly hear ourselves think. When grampa reached the spot where their croaking was loudest and most distinct he held his lantern down close to the edge of the pond, flicked his knife back and forth and picked up one fat bullfrog after the other, dropping them into our bags. The light blinded them, he explained, and made it easy to stun them with the flat of the blade.

Since it didn’t take long to bag all we could carry, we got back to the house in time for him to cut off the hind legs of the biggest and fattest frogs to gramma to skin and wash them before we went to bed.

A heaping plate full of these was given us the next morning for breakfast. Fried in fresh-churned butter, they were the most deliciously-flavored, finely-textured, white meat anyone had ever tasted.