MURDOCK-Vernace Mable Lough - Fountain County INGenWeb Project

Biographical Stories as told by: MURDOCK, CLAMAN, LOUGH, PURNELL, LIVENGOOD HAYES, PHILPOTT, RENSKY, TAYLOR, REICHARD

Vernace was born in Yeddo, Fountain County, Indiana. While we lived in Yeddo there was several cousins older than I. And I was always in the way. They wanted to get rid of me. So my Auntie had a big round clothes line that whirled around. So one day they decided that they was going to play train, so all the older kids played and I was left out. I supposed I throwed a fit of some kind and they said, "Well, she wants to be in it, let her be the headlight." So the headlight I was. Right in front of my cousin Ted Philpott. They had an axe hooked over the clothes line and at first we went real slow and we got along fine. Well, the bigger kids got to going too fast and they let loose of the axe handle and it hit me in the head. Knocked me out completely cold. And the doctor lived maybe 4 or 5 houses up the street from where this happened. So we went up there and I came to and about the first thing I said was, "Oh no, look at my new dress." But anyhow, in those days they did sew my head up and they took me home and I was in bed several days. My poor cousin, when I saw him he said, "Just think, I almost killed you!" I can still see that little couch at home. You never saw so much candy and stuff. Everybody in that little town was going to see that little girl that got hit in the head. I can remember very much then going to the doctor and him changing the bandages and it hurt and I cried. But right across the street from the doctors was another most attentive Aunt. It was just wonderful how close people were in those days. Anything happened, well they helped. Her mother, Eva Jane Purnell (1865-1925) was born near Hillsboro, Indiana, the only daughter of Francis and Melinda Livengood Purnell. The main reader that my mother took for her five years of school was the old McGutherie reader. And they would review that each winter. Instead of a new book, farther advanced, no, they went right through it again. And she stayed home and helped her father in the fields. She plowed corn and she just done everything. And that little doll in here, enclosed in that baby cradle, my mother was given that because she hoed in the corn fields. My mother was a head taller than my father. Tall and really skinny. She had a beautiful head of hair which she rolled in a knot on top of her head. And on the right side her hair was just a white as snow. She was always real proud and she would put talcum powder on her face and her hair was well combed and she always had a little pin that she would put in the front of her dress. Mother had very strict rules. She slapped me when I was 13. She said, "Will you go on the other side of the bed and straighten down the sheet?" And I said "No, I'm not." And how she got around the end of the bed to my side is a deep dark mystery. And she slapped me right in the mouth and said, "You don't talk to me that way." She was a wonderful, good woman but very strict. Eva married Charles Leonard Lough (1862-1922) in1885 and had two children, Vernace and Flava M Lough Reichard (1887-1969). My father was born west of Byron, IN near the Shades. I remember we went in the buggy one day, and Dad said "I'm going to show you the old home place where I was born." It was west of Byron up on a hill. And there is not a building left standing. And that's where all these Lough children were born in Parke County. He was a small man, possibly 5'6" and he had the most distinguished little mustache that I ever seen. He was called the peace maker. He never liked anyone mad or fussing. And in our home that was a no-no. My father never whipped me in his life, but he could talk and it would crush your heart. He was a traveling salesman for many years for the John Deere and McCormick Machinery Co. He made good money for those days. He would go all over...he had certain districts in Indiana and he would go set up the binders and the plows and things for John Deere. On one trip he was going to a town where I had an Aunt living, so he said, "you come and go with me." I remember, we didn't call them suitcases, we called them valises, a little handbag. And my mother carefully put in my starched clothes, all of her clothes were starched like boards, and I went up there and stayed a week with him, I went out each day with him to set up binders. And about every day our noon meal consisted of bread, kidney beans, cheese and crackers. Those didn't spoil. And that's why today I don't care for cheese and I can hardly swallow red beans. My Auntie would send two spoons and a jug of water. There would be kids at different places and I'd play with them. About 1900 they moved to Hillsboro. I went one year in Veedersberg to kindergarten and when I was five years old, we moved to Hillsboro and I entered grade school there. There was an old man lived north of us, Uncle Jim black, and I hated him. He'd pick up rocks, he and his son, and hit my dog or scare my cat. So one day, a great big poplar tree so dense you couldn't see, oh mother would have killed me if she'd known, I thought I'm going to get even with old Jim Black. And he went down chewing his tobacco and smoking his old pipe right under the tree. So one day I thought this is the day. I got up in that tree as far as I could and I saved up spit for an hour. Almost choked me. And when old Uncle Jim come and sat under the tree, plop, it went down on his hat. I was so relieved that I'd got even with him. He looked up and probably thought it was a big bird. When I was a child there was one song that I sung all the time...Oh Tell Me Sunny Goldenrod. That was the song that all three of us, Katherine Williams Rensky, Francis Taylor and I, loved to sing. It was a beautiful tune. It was a story about this flower, something about your golden hair, what the hand of God that rest you there. I can't remember the rest. We didn't have much to do in those days. Work in the garden, keep flowers, to bed early was the first rule. And, of course, we had the piano and I just kept that piano going. We'd go down to the store in Hillsboro and get the sheet music for 10 cents. I really enjoyed it. I was always going around humming and singing. We had a phonograph in later years. My father got it. It was the kind you cranked up. We'd roller skate, there was no shows, no nothing. We would go up and down the railroad tracks. Every Sunday evening at 4:30 there was a train that went through Hillsboro. We'd walk over to that depot. We'd start over on Park Avenue and we'd walk the railroad ties clear up, just get off, and we'd see the old train a coming, get up on the platform. Maybe it might slow up, maybe it might not stop, but we went over to the 4:30 train for something to do. And walked the tracks. And I've had skinned ankles, oh you won't believe. I never could just strike out and go straight. The first car I saw belonged to Uncle Billy Wright of Hillsboro. It was topless and it was painted white. Someone yelled, "That thing's a running and no horse's a pulling it." So it got to be something everybody wanted to see. He lived out north of Hillsboro. Every Sunday afternoon between Noon and 1:00, Uncle Billy would bring the car in as far as the bank and they'd be groups of people there and he'd take five...up one mile east and one mile back. And we all had big scarves on our head and we thought we was going to fall out and break our necks. And every Sunday afternoon, that was something new til everybody in town rode. Vernace married William Lewis Murdock (1892-1954) in 1913. William was the son of John Milton Murdock (1855-1927) and Lydia Florence Claman (1865-1930) and the Grandson of Citizen Murdock and Jane Campbell, early settlers of Fountain County. I met William at High School and at the Methodist Church in Hillsboro. I had no intentions of ever getting married. William and I went together quite a few years. He gave me a ring and at one time I asked him to take it back. He wouldn't do it, but I decided not to wear it. I don't know how many years really we did go together. So one Sunday evening, I never will forget it, he said, "will you marry me or aren't you?" He said, "We're not going to let this go on. Make up your mind." I said, "Yes, I guess I'm ready to move up to the farm." He said, "OK, we'll be married the 18th of March." And we were. We got married when I was 17 and he was 19 in the hardware store, among the skillets and the pots and the pans, by the Mayor of Covington. He had a little glassed in office there, it was ritzy. You had to have two witnesses. His father went and my father. And after he pronounced us man and wife, he picked up a skillet and he said, "I think I'll give this to you." He was only kidding. He couldn't give that away. It was probably 15 or 20 cents. Then we went to Champaign, Illinois, to my sister's, for our honeymoon. They took us into Champaign that night to a show. His parents built us a house, but I lived with my mother nine months after we were married and he drove from his home which was just right down west of Hillsboro in horse and buggy days and he'd drive up there all the time. My mother had a barn and he'd put his horse in it. And I would go down to his mother's and stay. And in the meantime he had 80 acres down in the Campbell-Chapel neighborhood and they built us a little four-room home right out in the middle of a field. And all summer long we ordered our furniture by freight. And his mother had that big house and she cleaned out one bedroom and we had all our furniture before we moved in November. For the four rooms it was $200 including everything for the dining room, living room, and kitchen. But money was hard to get by too. You'd take your eggs to Veedersberg for 6 1/2 cents a dozen and they'd say, "We can't use them," so we would take them back home, cook the eggs and feed them to the chickens. Nobody had any money and you couldn't get a thing. Oats was 10 cents a bushel and you couldn't hardly give corn away. You just had to buy more hogs to feed your corn to. Sometimes we'd just turn them loose in the corn field. Our first car was a new Ford. William put it in the barn and he told me, "You're not to drive it." I said, "That's what you think." One day he was off farming and I thought, "I'm going to start it." I pushed it out of the barn and oh, I was so happy, I just cranked it until my hands were just blistered. Cranked, pulled out that old choke, and well, it started. And I rode around the barn and when I went to go in I wasn't so lucky. Hit the side of the barn door and broke off a coal oil light. Now, I thought,"Well, I'm going to have to face it. I'm not going to lie. And I'm really going to hear some harsh words." William came in with the team and I said, "I've got...let you take some of my chicken money and let you buy a light." He said, "What've you done?" I said, "Look." He said, "What'd you do it for?" And I said, "Simply because you said I couldn't and I knowed I was." Then he shut up and let me drive. Lydia Florence Claman Murdock was daughter of John and Margaret Hayes Claman from a farm in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee near the town of Elizabethton. After Grandfather (John) Murdock died we moved up there to live and take care of Grandmother (Lydia) Murdock It was a big nine room house which fitted my family very nicely. During that time Grandmother had several strokes and was blind in one eye. Grandmother Murdock came with her family[to Indiana] in a covered wagon. They had to stop one night. It was at the end of the Civil War. So they stopped at a place and built a fire...and when the sun came up, they looked and they was in a ...nothing but bones and skeletons. They didn't know where they were coming through and they camped there all night in that battle graveyard. They went on through to Indianapolis. It was a little place and Great Grandmother (Margaret Hayes Claman) got out with some kids and got lost in Indianapolis...and they had to go hunt for her.