Uncle Harve's Journal: 1. Kansas and Illinois

A homestead in Kansas turns into a farm in Illinois.

I had many aunts and uncles on both sides of my family. My two favorite uncles were one by marriage, and Mother’s brother, Harve Victor Schoonover. My Schoonover grandparents left central Illinois and homesteaded In Western Kansas where Uncle Harve was born. They lived on their one hundred sixty acre form for two or three years before they traded the farm for a sewing machine and returned to central Illinois. Later, Uncle Harve wrote about this time.

-- OMS

Kansas

My folks once lived in western Kansas and I was born there at La Crosse in 1879. Part of the time we lived in a sod house. I think it was really part dug-out, about half underground and half above. My father had a Sharps rifle and, when he got up in the morning, he always went to the door to see if there were any antelope in shooting distance. Antelopes have very small legs and my father said that when they were standing on hill some distance away you couldn’t see their legs, and their bodies looked as though they were suspended in air.

Standing in the door one morning he looked down and there was a rattlesnake coiled at his feet. (Many years after this I killed seven rattlesnakes in one day while walking across the western Kansas prairie.)

Times were hard and my mother told me that one winter we lived mostly on sorghum molasses and beets. Many years afterward my good friend, John Bishop, told me that at the time of which I write he was living in an adjoining county. He said they planted wheat there one fall, and it didn’t come up until a year from the next spring. Of course, they have seasons there now when crops are not so good, but since they have learned what to plant and how to plant it that country is prosperous. (The oil wells help.) But why at that time anyone would leave the cheap land of central Illinois and homestead in western Kansas is something I’ll never understand.

Uncle Harve was forty years old when I was born. I met him only once before he retired in his middle sixties. After my aunt (his wife) died and my dad passed away, Mother purchased a few acres to raise fruit and vegetables to sell along the highway. Uncle Harve built himself a small house on the property so that he could aid Mother. He was seventy-two years old at the time. I took I him fishing a hundred or more times during the next ten or twelve years. Before he died, he gave me a notebook of his writings. This book presents his comments on the rural Midwest during the latter part of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries.

Uncle Harve grew up in a fun-loving family. My grandmother was one of the better cooks in the county, in addition to being the type of person people enjoyed being around, I remember my grandfather saying that he would be a wealthy man if he had a nickel for every free meal received at his table.

Each member of the family had great respect for the others, but there was little outward demonstration of fondness. Children were taught that you showed your love for others in the family by the way you treated them every day of your lives, and not by hugging and kissing.

Uncle Harve’s eldest son told of the great difference between his Mother’s and his Father’s families. Uncle Harve was a farmer and county surveyor of Adams County, which borders the Mississippi River, and was about one hundred miles from my grandparents. People did not travel extensively during the early part of this century. After several years of not seeing his folks, Uncle Harve decided to visit his and his wife’s families. He wrote my grandparents and told them to meet him at Fish Lake on a certain day; my grandparents liked to fish. His wife’s parents lived near the lake. Uncle Harve came a day early to visit his in-laws. My cousin said there was much hugging and kissing and tears of joy at the homecoming. The next day when they arrived at the lake, my grandmother had crawled out on a log which had fallen into the lake, and was sitting fishing. Uncle Harve walked over to the end of the log and said, “Hello, Ma.” Grandma looked around and said, “Hello, Harve.” She went back to fishing and Uncle Harve went about his business.

When my grandparents gave up their homestead in Kansas, they returned to Macon County, Illinois, where they were raised. They settled in a rural community where the soil was sandy. Later, Uncle Harve wrote about the sand of Macon County.

Sand

Along the east side of the Illinois River from Pekin to the Sangamon there is more or less sand. In places it used to drift with the wind, covering up roads or even fences. In that country they used to ‘straw the roads. Straw was hauled out and spread a foot or more deep. This made a good road for light traffic when packed. It soon wears out, but there is always more straw.

There is a story about a stranger who was passing through, and stopped to talk with a farmer. Said the stranger, “Seems to me you must have a hard time making a living here.” The farmer replied, “Yes, but I’m not as poor as you think I am. I don’t own this ground.”

But time, alfalfa, and cattle have made that a land of fine houses, big red barns, and big black automobiles.

But not all of that county is ‘blow sand’. Much of it is dark sand that raises the finest quality grain. Some of the ground west of Kilbourne, for instance, is ideal farmland, easy to farm, yet raising good crops of fine quality. I have been told that because of its high quality, grain raised on Macon County sand in the early days was quoted separately on the Chicago Board of Trade. I wouldn’t know about that, but Mr. Abe Toznlin near Easton told me that he hauled such corn nineteen miles to the river at Bath, and got a flip a bushel for it. I understood him to say flip, but I have seen it spelled fip. The dictionary called it fippeny bit. Anyway, it is a half-bit: six and one-quarter cents. Twenty bushels of ear corn weighs fourteen hundred pounds. That would be a big load over the road, or lack of roads that he had then. It would bring him a dollar and a quarter delivered at Bath.

This story will illustrate how some of the early settlers got their start. When finishing up a job of shelling corn for an old German farmer, the old fellow wanted to see that the hired ‘scoopers’ did a good job of cleaning up around the sheller, and came to help them. After the men had finished and were leaning on their scoops, the owner was still down on his knees scratching around trying to find more corn. One of the men dropped his scoop and took out after a mouse. ‘There goes a mouse with a grain,” he yelled.

When I was very young, my dad rented a farm in a neighborhood where sand hills were strawed. One of our neighbors came for a visit, and he and dad were examining their cars. The engine of our car was covered with grease and dirt, while that of the neighbor was spotless. Our neighbor said that he would be afraid that his engine would catch on fire and burn his car if he let grease collect on the engine. On the way home his car stalled on a hill. When he tried to start the car, it backfired, starting the straw on fire. His car was destroyed.