Memoirs of Fred Dillard

Submitted by Marvin Beatty

Fred Dillard was a well known school teacher in the French Lick area.

Part 9

Displaced People from the Dubois County line to Newton Stewart

As I sit in my comfortable home this cold February day, I have a feeling that it may be useless to write of these places and people and as the snow is now falling, and added to that which is on the ground, is covering all familiar things from view, I have a compulsion to let it be so with the places displaced by the waters. But hoping in the furture these facts may be interesting and useful to someone that likes to delve into the happenings of the past, I shall continue the bare outline.

At the Southeast corner of the intersection of the Dubois Co. line and the Elon Road was the farm of Charles Hall. Here were built the structures typical of the prosperous farms of that area. Charles Hall was a Trustee of Jackson Twp. about the year 1900. Clyde Palmer and Emmett Hall, my first two teachers at No. 10 boarded with their uncle Charles, and walked the two miles to school. In the granary of this farm was the first clipper wheat fan that I knew about. My father and I spent two days fanning 40 bu. seed wheat to plant our crop in the year 1905. The fan had to operated by means of a crank turned by hand. Mr. Hall charged 10 cents per bu. for the use of the fan. Mr. Hall sold the farm and moved to Leipsic. Alas the buildings are all gone and remain only in the memories of older people like myself. (Before moving to Leipsic Charlie Hall owned a hotel in French Lick which was later known as the Claxton House. It is no longer standing).

About one half mile to the Southwest from the Charles Hall farm was that of his brother, Morton Hall. This farm and family I have mentioned when I wrote of the farms on Hall Ridge. The ruins of the house and barn are visible near Seng Lake. It was in this family that occurred the first divorce that bewildered me as a child. The wife was Mary and they had a son, my age, named Robert. With my mother, we often walked to visit them along the summit of Hall Ridge. I remember while Mother and Mary were talking in an adjoining room Robert and I were climbing upon chairs tto obtain lumps of brown sugar from the bowl.

One morning early my father said to me, “Fred you and Fredonia are to stay with grandpa today for Mother and I are going to Paoli to be witnesses in a trial. We won’t be back until late.” In that day, as is still the case in our day, one party had to be proven guilty and I never knew which was the guilty one or to whom custody of Robert was given or whose witnesses my parents were.

When riding this distance in later years to take part in my graduation exercises from the Elementary Schools I wondered how my Mother could stand to ride all that distance on a side saddle and return the same day. But such was the life of all of us in that day and the continual exercise gave us all great powers of endurance and strength. I wish that we could recapture some of this for our day.

About one half mile due East of the Hall farms is a small mound about 60 ft. in height and just large enough for a group of farm buildings and a yard and a garden. The level plains of the Patoka River stretch away from this mound in all directions and to the South, East and North for over a mile. Morton and Martha Whittinghill began their marriage here with one daughter, Gertie. As a boy I never knew what the trouble was but one morning I heard my father say that Mort had taken his team and new wagon and his daughter and had left for Oklahoma. It was said that a mortgage was left upon the homestead. So Martha with her children, Pearl, Hobart, Florence, Ethel, Fred, Amanda, Lotta and Felix and Grace, carried on and operated the farm successfully. The daughters were strong and healthy and did men’s work as they helped brother Fred with the work. Fred was handicapped by being deaf and dumb. His sight and touch became very acute. He was strong and industrious and could tell when his binder or machinery wasn’t working properly by the vibrations. He was always cheerful and had a smile and liked to converse in various ways with us friends at Elon. If he wanted to know the time he pointed to the sun and to your watch. If he wanted to tell you that his harness was better than yours he waved his hand like he would throw yours away and cut them with a knife. His, he would throw on the horses and drive off. I learned the blind alphabet so the I could talk to him on my fingers as his sisters did. He enjoyed himself and got as much from life as anyone. He would make a groaning noise with his vocal chords. When later I was with foreign strangers in France and Germany I used the methods of communication I had learned from Fred to get acquainted with those people.

Martha Whittinghill could look from her kitchen window and see her children working in the fields or the animals in the fields any where on the farm. This family had all the comfort and conveniences that the rest of us had, in that day. Her home was the typical log square in the center and dining room shed across the back and a broad front porch across the front. The barn was also a similar pattern. More modern buildings were built to replace the older ones later.

I have told of this family when I lived on the Batman farm later in displaced people of Dubois County. Many more were the stories of this family and I hope that some of its are writing a detailed history. Only Ethel and Grace are living.

But there is one daughter of this family that I cannot refrain from telling about because she is an example how one can overcome. After working her way through French Lick High School and the State Normal she became a teacher. Amanda began teaching in Jackson Twp. at the same time that I and my cousins William and Arthur Dillard did. She was assigned the # 7 school, now standing and a hay shed, some three miles East of Newton Stewart . From her farm to the school was a distance of almost 7 miles. This she rode every school day in snow or rain or mud or fair weather. Just think of the responsibility of riding that distance in a snow storm such is now occurring, caring for the horse, building a fire, and maintaining it and teaching 36 or 40 children in classes ranging from one to eight. Also controlling boys only four years younger than herself required tact and ability. Such were the difficulties she and all of us overcame.

This farm is now a part of the Ben Seng farms. It is a part of a large, modern, prosperous operation and will be hard to give up. It is said that the mound will be partly above water. Shall we call it “Martha’s Vineyard?” Or maybe “Martha’s Island” would be more appropriate as there was nothing in her life that would suggest a vineyard. In the interim this farm was owned by Joseph Hasse and Elza Simmons. This farm now includes parts of the Hall, Thompson, and Bid Young farms.

Due North from the Whittinghill farm and across the river is the beautiful, white house now occupied by Clyde and Esta Owen. This farm was first the property of William Clements, then owned by Jesse and his sister Bersey Clements. Jesse was never married and a Civil War soldier. More I wrote of this family in Dubois. I hope someone will write a history of this wonderful family. I shall discuss them again when I come to write of Elon. Here on this farm where the concrete bridges located was the Clements Ford and it was used by the early settlers between the periods of high water. Another was the Hubbs Ford where the bridge was located between the Morris Hubbs and Seng farms. I remember that in crossing this ford in the farm wagon with my father and family that the broad led down along the South bank and then along down stream in the shallow water but when the wagon turned toward the North bank to leave the river the water suddenly became much deeper and sometimes ran into the bid. My heart came up into my mouth and only went down and I breathed freely long after we left the river on our way to my Uncle, Oliver Beatty’s home. North of the Clements bridge and ford was the farm of James Newton and wife ? Walters. It is now owned by his son Elvit.

The broad acres extending from the Clements Ford Southeastward and to Elon was once the property of Jack Cope in the early days. In my recollection it belonged to two well known and prosperous brothers, Thomas and Andrew Cope. They had married the Ford sisters Etta and Martha. If both had had children they would have been double cousins but as it was Thomas and Etta had no children but they became almost father and mother to the large family of children of Andy and Martha. These brothers liked baseball and fox hunting. Many are the exciting baseball games I have seen on the different diamonds on this farm. Elon played, Ellsworth, Wickliff, Newton Stewart, Dubois, Cuzco, Birdseye, English, Pete Friedman’s team and others. They had the first greyhound that I ever saw and he was credited with catching foxes on the run.

This farm was made a modern dairy farm by their nephew, Elvin Cope, a teacher and leading civic leader and farmer of his generation.This large farm, with its modern home is now in the possession of of the children of Elvin and his wife Pearl (Kellams) Cope. These people will be recognized further when I write of the Elon Christian Church.

The farm to the South of the Cope farms is one extending 3/4 miles South and 1/2 mile wide and containing three eighties in 3 rows running North and South and containing 240 acres. I feel unable to describe all that pertains to this outstanding farm.From the days of my childhood it had always been an example of almost perfect management and farm production, even by the first owner, John Byers, and its present one Roosevelt Drake.

Uncle Johnny, as he was affectionately called by all his neighbors, though he sometimes appeared to be gruff and outspoken, had lost his companion early in life and lived with four sons and two daughters in the spacious home here. Before coming to Indiana he and his brother, Henry, were raised on a plantation in Virginia. When the Civil War began John happened to be a citizen of Louisiana and had to fight for the South while Henry fought for the North. Whether they were ever on opposing sides in battle I do not know. Later Henry and his family lived near John in Elon.

Uncle John was a good farmer and in that early day with him there was a science of Agriculture, the right way and the wrong way to do things. He had a set way to raise corn, to cure hay, to shoe horses, to store grain, to run business, to lend money, to pay wages, to cure meat, and to raise a family. His corn was always planted at the right time and never late as was true of many of his contemporaries including the Dillards. He never used the corn drill until many years after others had. His cross laid off his corn ground with a new ground shovel six inches deep. He hired the farmer’s wives that were glad to earn the money that was always paid at the end of each day to drop 3 grains of corn at each intersection and her husband to cover it with a hoe. For this they each received 75 cents per day of 10 hours. His corn was always put in shocks quickly and at the right time in the fall and shucked and cribbed before winter. The corn was sold to other farmers when they were out in the spring.

His herd grass (red top) hay was always cut at the right time, cured without rain, raked into windows and shocked. These shocks were dragged to stacks by hired help and placed in haystacks of two wagon loads each. I have seen twenty stacks in his yard on the West side of the farm and an equal number extending up and down the hill North of his house. These he sold to farmers in the spring when they were without hay to make a crop. The large stacks were $14 each and the small ones $12 each. I have helped my father haul the two loads over the muddy roads to our farm. We were glad to get them. I can not tell all about this man here, his appearance, money lending, custom of letting his boys off on Sat. afternoon to dress and spend in Elon in their best while the rest of us had to work usually, or when the temperature reached 90 degrees in the summer all farm operations ceased. He will be mentioned later in his connection with the Centerville Milling Co.

The farm was next owned by Bowley Lorey and his wife Barbara (Morganroth). Here they improved the farm and raised a large family some of whom reside in Jasper. This family and my relationship to it has a story comparable to that of the Byers family but as their ownership is more recent I feel it is fresh in the memory of many now living as will be true of the more recent owners, Drabing and Roosevelt Drake. Lloyd Drabing of French Lick built the present modern home on the farm. He fenced and tiled it.

The present owner, Roosevelt Drake and his wife Hazel and sons, Robert and Donald have made a profitable and modern farm of these acres.This young man in 1920 helped his father saw lumber for a house and in the spring left to join the army. After his enlistment was over, he returned, married and to show what an ambitious and industrious couple can do they have acquired one of the leading farm operation in the valley, educate their children, and are financially independent. What a spread to give up!

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Note:

Of all the Whittinghill children mentioned in Mr. Dillard’s account, only one is still living. She is Grace Speece, now in her ninety third year and living in French Lick. She was married to Byron Speece of West Baden who spent many years as a baseball pitcher in the Major Leagues. Amanda became the wife of Dr. John A. Tolliver of French Lick and they had two sons, John and Leon, both living. Ethel died not long after Mr. Dillard wrote these accounts. Her last husband was Garrett Ferguson, a well known citizen of French Lick.