With the city celebrating its 150th birthday this weekend, the Journal-World is taking a look at early-day life in Lawrence:

Many of Lawrence’s earliest settlers were men who planned to establish a claim and return home in the spring for their families.

Erastus Ladd, one of those early men, found humor in the situation as he wrote a letter home.

“All here are living in tents, and it would please you to see us men at the hour of meals, gathered around our camp fires with our frying pans, tea kettles, bake-kettles and other appliances, providing our food, some to their wrists in dough, preparing bread, and others washing dishes,” Ladd wrote. “Well, this will be obviated when we get places to live and our wives and families.”