Paulding County's Past (Don H. Price)

Don H. Price, author of an earlier full history of Paulding (1975), followed it with this 15-part column series for the Paulding Progress’s 1976 Bicentennial Section, intending readers to “cut them out of the paper and file them away with your book of Paulding past.” One planned article, “The Cider Mills,” does not appear to have survived in the scan this transcription is drawn from.

Two further pieces accompanied this series in the same source but are being held back from this archive for now: “The Revival Meetings” (included below) touches on religious life in 1901 Paulding, and “Jim Powell” — which covers vote-buying targeting Black voters and an 1894 double-murder case with a racially fraught aftermath — is being withheld pending further review given its sensitivity and the seriousness of its central, unverified claim.

Land Values

We are celebrating the 200th anniversary of our country in 1776. At that time there was not a white man living in Paulding County. They were all Indians living in the woods and swamps. They followed the rivers as their means of transportation and that is why we can still find arrowheads along the banks of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers.

In 1876, or one hundred years later the Indians were mostly gone and we were settling the county with about 10,000 people, but the county was still about 80 per cent woods and swamp. The wholesale removal of the virgin timber was not started until 1880 when the Hoop and Stave mills were set up all over the county to remove this timber and make them into wooden barrels, buckets, bolts and kegs.

The land was cheap and worthless except for the timber at that time. Land could be bought for $3 to $6 per acre. The only people who bought much of it at a time were the timber processors who bought up land to take the timber off of the same to make into barrel hoops and staves. Major Holcumb paid $10,000 for 1600 acres of land a mile NW of Paulding in

1. The next year Paul Weidmann paid $20,000 for 3600 acres west of Paulding.

The land had not yet been surveyed because the timber had not been removed from the same. If a man had $60,000 he could have bought half of a township. No one in Paulding County had that much money and if they had would not have bought that worthless swampy woods land. Some argue that it was a debatable question at that time as to whether the water could ever be drained off of this land.

We can later remember back in the teens when they said Paulding County land will never get to $200 an acre and stay there very long. At that time a man would pay $100 per acre and figure that he would be a lifetime farming to pay for his farm. His ambition was to farm for 30 to 40 years and pay for his farm before he died.

The great depression of 1933 found many a farmer in debt for $100 per acre and he could not pay the interest on this land. The smart loan company did not want the land and they would tell the farmer to make payments as he could on interest and principal. Many a farmer gave up and gave the land back to the Loan Company and moved off of the farm he had worked hard on for years.

Land and the produce of the same should never get cheap again. There is only so much land in NW Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa that produces corn and we cannot produce any more land. In fact, good land is getting smaller as we build roads and expand our cities into the country.

No matter what happens to the rest of the economy. The stocks we buy might not be worth anything, but the land will always be there and will always produce crops every year to feed the starving world.

Retirement

At the turn of the century a man living in Paulding County did not dream that he would ever have enough accumulated at any time in his life so that he could retire. All he ever did was work hard all his life and try and save enough to perhaps pay for his $1500 home, or his little 40 acre farm. If he could save enough to ever get out of debt before he died he was above the average.

The farmer would raise a large family and he would work hard all his life to pay for the farm he lived on. A man was lucky as he grew old if one of the boys would take over the farm in time, and Dad could ease off by simply staying on the home place and helping with the chores as long as he could, and in time do nothing but sit in his favorite rocking chair. The property was usually handed down from father to son or son-in-law. Every family took care of their own parents as they grew old.

In town a man would run a store or perhaps clerk in one most of his life. There were no factories to work in. Most men worked for themselves as long as they could. They worked hard and did not live as long as they do today. It did not cost much to live because they did not have the modern homes we have today.

Quite a few people at the turn of the century never traveled 20 miles away from home all their lives. The township trustees would give some aid to poor families in the winter months, but there was no County, State or Federal aid assistance.

There was no time in a man’s life when he could plan on retiring. He never made enough to think of it. He would work as long as he was able, and his children were supposed to look after his few needs in the last years of his life.

One man in Paulding never did much work. He raised a family of two boys and a girl, his wife’s sister lived with them and she took in washing to keep the family. The children would come to your home with a small hand drawn wagon and get your washing in a basket, take it home where Aunt Sade would do the washing and ironing, then the children would deliver the clean clothes back to the owner the next day. If the washing was not too large the charge would be perhaps $1.50 a washing and ironing.

There were quite a few men in town who did not like to work and their wives would keep them by either taking in washings or working out by the day as a hired girl.

One man worked as a clerk in a store for about twenty years. He never made enough to save for his old age. When he retired the owner left him $500 in his will. That was considered quite a bit of money.

Being poor was no disgrace, most people did not have much. Everyone walked wherever they went. One man and his wife went to the St. Louis World’s Fair. They stayed there two days and spent less than $15 for meals, lodging and seeing the fair. He came home with 50 cents in his pocket.

Justice In The 19th Century

The art of stealing was easier to detect before the coming of the auto, because a man could not get too far away from the scene of the crime. Most crimes were detected. It was not uncommon for whole families to be known as stealing families and perhaps their children were known to steal. The lowest down person was the man who was known as a Horse Thief or Chicken Stealer. The man who stole your horse took you from transportation and perhaps the only possession you owned. The low down person who stole chickens, stole the only form of income a farmer’s wife possessed. Her chicken and egg money. This sometimes paid for all the food purchased by the family as well as the cloth to make most of their clothes. Horse thieves were sometimes hung and the penalty for chicken stealing was very severe.

Horse Thieves were known to dye the color of the horse and mix them with other horses at a horse sale. If near a river they were sometimes put on a boat and floated down stream to a new locality to sell. In most families grandmother had a large family bible. In the middle of this book was a large family tree that she filled out. If Uncle Fred was a horse thief, his branch of the tree was not filled out, and very little record was kept of what happened to his family.

In the early days a farmer did not go to town every day or even every week. The leading merchant in the nearest town would run a huckster wagon past his farm with groceries and merchandise once a week. The chickens belonged to the wife, and the eggs were hers to buy groceries or perhaps some might be left to buy yard goods for a dress. The man who came in the night and stole her chickens was looked down upon.

Because a man could not travel very far from home justice was dispensed on a township basis by a local Justice of the Peace and a township Constable. He was assisted in town by a village marshal. The thief when apprehended was locked up in the local calaboose until his trial the next day.

One of the main duties of the Marshal was to pick up and lock up all men he might find dead drunk in some back alley after night. The person who had picked his pockets was no doubt a local woodsman who came to town for a drink and had one too many. Some saloon keepers would drag the drunk into a back room and throw a horse blanket over him to sleep out his drunk, others would throw them out into the streets and alleys. It might be raining or cold, and it was the marshal’s business to take the drunk to the calaboose where there was a warm fire and a blanket and a cot the drunk laid on to sober up. On a Saturday night in Paulding there might be a half dozen or more in the calaboose overnight.

The stealing of little things were harder to detect. Most boys were known to have stolen a watermelon or a few apples after night, but some families were known to have made it a business. They would go out and steal several bushels of apples every fall, or perhaps enough corn for their chickens over winter. This was hard to trace and prove unless caught in the act. One farmer knowing that his neighbor was stealing corn from his crop every fall, went to the bother of driving tacks in the end of quite a few ears of corn and one morning when he noticed quite a few bushels of corn missing he swore out a warrant against his neighbor and identified his corn in the wrong crib.

It might be said as a whole because of the lack of transportation there was more honesty in the olden days. A man was more dependent upon his neighbor in times of trouble and there was more honesty. This also applied to money. If a man was honest he could borrow money without any security except a note, which was not recorded. Oral contracts were made by a handshake. There were very few defaults. It was a public disgrace to be dishonest.

Old Fashioned Good Things To Eat

In the spring of the year there would always be someone going from house to house selling Pure Maple Syrup in gallon cans. It was kind of expensive at about $2.50 a gallon. They would also have for sale cakes of maple syrup candy. It was very rich to eat. Grandfather always butchered a couple of hogs every fall and we had sausage fried down in crock cans that we could open up and use any time. There was also someone Dad knew who grew buckwheat and we would buy the pure buckwheat flour. Mother would set the buckwheat batter the night before with yeast in it to make it rise and make fluffy pancakes. Those pancakes with maple syrup and sausage was awfully good eating for breakfast. We had them all winter.

With the coming of spring someone would be selling sassafras to make sassafras tea. They claimed you needed that to thin your blood for spring. About the first fruit of summer were currants and goosberry for pie. They were a little sour even with sugar on them but we liked them. Another tarty pie we liked later on in the summer was green gage plum pie.

Grandfather always claimed the best pie made was elderberry pie. He also said that quince jelly was the best jam. Wild honey taken from a bee tree in the woods by the bucket full was always the sweetest you could get, the same as wild strawberries picked down along the rail road track were the sweetest. They were small but sweet.

Grandfather lives close to the Indiana state line and there was a French settlement up along the Ridge Road which is now U.S. 30 from the state line to New Haven. These French people all raised cherries and we would take all the pails we had and go up there to pick cherries. They would charge us one dollar a pail for all we could pick. A ten year old boy with a wire S shaped hook could climb a tree and pick a pail full in a short time. He would hang his pail on the tree and pick with both hands.

In the fall of the year we always went to the woods and picked large hickorynuts. In the winter it was my job every Sat. morning to crack hickory nuts and then help my sisters pick the enough kernals out to make a hickory nut cake for Sunday dinner. The whole kernals we would save to put on top of the cake.

We had one Bartlet pear tree and mother would take the best of them and cook them down for pear butter. It had cinniman in it and made a good spread.

There was also a man that came around every fall selling surgum in quart or half gallon glass cans. Mother would get some for cooking, but I liked to eat it on fresh home made bread.

Of course the best eating in the long winter evenings after supper was always pop corn and apples. We would have pop corn one night and apples the next.

The Potassium Factory

(Elsewhere titled “The Pot-Ash Factory” — the ashery this article describes, run by “Bandy” (Michael) Englehart, is the same one covered from a different angle in this archive’s “Paulding County Pedigree: Black Salts” entry.)

After the large timber was removed from the land of Paulding County the farmers would complete the clearing of the land of small timber and brush by burning the same. This put a lot of potassium in the ground. They used to say that this New Ground was the best to raise crops. In time this potassium would leach out and something else had to be added to the ground to keep up its fertility. This substitute was barn yard manure spread on the ground with a manure spreader. From 1900 to 1920 they farmed with horses and kept hogs and cattle as well as sheep on the farms producing manure to help keep up the fertility of the fields. When they did away with livestock and started to use tractors and other power machinery they had to turn to commercial fertilizer to produce the nitrogen and potassium needed to obtain larger crop yields.

During the same period of time the woods were cut up and each farmer would heat his home with several wood burning heating and cook stoves in the home. Sometime during the year he would cut and store ahead his wood for the winter in a long Wood Pile located somewhere near his home.

The burning of this wood in stoves created a lot of wood ashes. The farmer would carry these ashes out every day to a dry storage ash bin. All ashes were thus kept until the bin was almost full and then they would make soap out of these wood ashes.

A large hollow Sycamore or Gum Tree was cut. It would be 2 to 3 feet in diameter, and hollow. The piece of the tree used would be perhaps 4 or 5 feet long. This was set on a platform built a foot or more above the ground. It would have a groove in it to direct the flow of filtered water. The hollow log was then filled with wood ashes, and water poured over the same. This would go down through the ashes and be caught in crocks below. The water caught was poured over the top of the ashes again and again to make the liquid real strong. It had to be strong enough to float an egg. It was then ready to make soap. It was called lye.

They would then take large kettles and fill with fat of any kind and put over a fire, adding the lye to dissolve or emulsify the fat. They would cook it down until it was thick and the lye had dissolved the emulsion.

Pork fat usually made dark soak. If they did not burn it in cooking it would be light. But light or dark it was always strong and hard on the skin. It was then poured into wooden trays, about 1½ inch deep and allowed to cool. The result was soap for the farmer’s wife to use. She cut it with a knife the size she wanted.

Bandy Englehart built a Potassium or as we called it a Pot-Ash Factory on the N. Side of W. Wayne street of Paulding. It was the only one in the county. It was the same process the farmer used to make soap except Bandy only made the Lye and shipped it to the cities to be made into soap by soap factories.

He had a wagon and a team of horses to go around and gather up wood ashes, he would also pay the farmers a small amount for hauling their ashes into his factory. He did a big business and the residue of the ash after he was through with it was hauled behind the factory and piled in a large pile that was perhaps two blocks long and 100 feet high. We called it the Ashery. This process was abandoned shortly after the turn of the 20th century, because they ran out of ashes.

He was called Bandy because he was so small. He made a good living as long as the wood ash was available.

Learning The Facts Of Life

Back around the turn of the century we did not learn the facts of life very early. The different games that we played in the vacant lot were played by the boys and girls together, and all had a good time. This usually lasted until we were through the eighth grade.

I well remember the night when the girl next door and I learned our first lesson. For years the rest of the class had all coasted down Straw’s Hill together. Our sleds then were long ones with wide runners and we found out that we could coast farther on the ice and snow if two people would lay face down on the sled on top of each other. We all tried to see who could go the farthest downhill.

Winter came and with it the snow. A coasting party was planned by the fresh-man class in 1915 at Straw’s Hill for one night after supper. The girl next door and I lived the closest to the hill and we had coasted down it together for years.

We took off first to show the rest of the class how far we could coast downhill. I was on the bottom and Eva was on top of me. We had a good coast and went quite a ways out on the ice toward the creek. We were both very proud of how far we gone and it set the record for the night.

When we pulled the sled up to the top of the hill the rest of the class was all waiting for us. The girls gathered around Eva and told her the facts of life, that girls did not get on top of boys to coast downhill. The boys, meanwhile, were telling me the same thing. They spoiled the good times we had playing together for years. Both of us were sorry we were growing up.

The Paulding County Fair

The fairs were more popular at the turn of the century than they are to-day for several reasons. First people did not travel far away from home on those days, for some it was their only holiday. Second we were living in a livestock era and the fair brought out the best livestock, and lastly most of the population of the county lived on farms.

The fair was always held the last week in August when the early harvest of fruit and vegetables were at their best. The women were mostly homemakers and did not work in offices or factories. They were good cooks and they liked to display their wares and household achievements to win a prize at the county fair. The Art Hall and the Vegetable and Fruit Buildings were always a main attraction for all. The men were very proud of the different forms of livestock they raised and they liked to take them to the fair for display.

The fair started out slowly on Monday and built up to a climax late Friday afternoon. There were no lights on the fairground so all attractions were held in the daytime. The different displays were set up on Monday. On Tuesday the judges gave out the prize ribbons, after that the exhibits were up for display with their first, second and third ribbons attached, for the rest of the fair week.

All the business houses in Paulding as well as the Court House would close Thursday and Friday afternoons for the fair. The uptown was deserted. Quite a few merchants had displays at the fair.

By Wednesday there were preliminary contests such as the Mule Race, the Horse and Buggy race and perhaps a horse pulling contest.

Thursday and Friday were the big days at the fair. The entire farm family would get up early, fill a wagon bottom with hay to set on, and with a team of horses start from the far corners of the county to the fair. They would enter the Fair Grounds as early as 6 A.M. and there would be a steady flow of traffic entering until almost noon. They would drive down in the bottom land behind the grandstand, tie their horses to a tree, and make that their headquarters for the day. At noon the family would get together, spread a table cloth on the ground and eat a big basket lunch they had brought along with them from home. A number of farmers’ shephard dogs would follow under the wagon to the fair. They would get into the worse dog fights sometime during the day.

Most people in Paulding walked to the fair in families because the father had bought a family ticket for all to enter the grounds at the same time. After entering the gate he would give each of the children a quarter to spend that day at the fair. Everything cost a nickle in those days.

The big attraction of the fair were the horse races. There were always some local as well as out of town horses in the races. The crowd pulled for the drivers of the local horses, and were very indignant if the starter did not see to it that the local horse was in a good position when he said GO. A lot of people bet on the local horses to either win or loose. There was one local driver who owned his own horse. It was always a safe bet to figure on Bills horse coming in last.

The grandstand was always full but there were a lot of people who thought it was too expensive to pay .50¢ to sit in the grandstand and they would stand all afternoon along the fence either on the outside or inside of the track to watch the races.

A large number of people in other towns in the county would come to the fair by train. There was a 7 A.M. from the south and another 7 P.M. train going south. Some people would walk to the fair from Latty or Cecil. They would walk along the rail road track to Paulding. If you were up town there were several fancy hacks to the Fair Ground available at the S.W. Corner of the square. The charge was .25¢ per person. They ran back and forth all day. This was considered going to the fair in style. Some of the local boys would take their girls out in this manner.

For many people going to the fair either on Thursday or Friday was the big event of the year, and perhaps the only time the whole family left home together to go anywheres. In 1905 we lived on S. Williams street, and as a small boy I would get up early and go out to sit on the front porch to watch for 3 or 4 hours as a solid line of people would go by walking, on horseback, in a hack, buggy or in a wagon, all going to the Fair. Then about 3 P.M. the tide would turn and I would watch the same people going back home past our house. It would take several hours for them to all go by. Traffic moved very slowly in the horse and buggy days.

There were four wells on the fair ground. One was just inside the N.E. gate entrance, one near the N.W. Gate entrance, one back of the hill on the side of the grandstand and the fourth at the south end of the fair grounds near the horse barns. All four wells had a pump with a new tin cup attached to the same, where all could go and obtain a good cold drink of water. Some people carried with them a small collapsable round tin cup. The well near the horse barn pumped water into a large horse watering trough, and about every day there was a boy pumping water into the trough all day long. Others would carry buckets of water to the different concession stands.

Most families would go to the fair either on Thursday or Friday and stay all day. Old men would brag on how many years they had attended the fair. Most of them would dress up and go to visit with their neighbors or friends. While the Grandstand would only hold between 500 and 600 people, there might be over 5000 people on the fair grounds. Everybody went to the Paulding County Fair.

The Tile Mills

Covered in full as its own entry in this archive: “Tile Mills: Another Page of County History” — the same article ran in this column series (as “Another page from the history of Paulding,” Paulding Progress, Jan. 5, 1977) and was later reprinted again in Visions of Paulding County, Volume 1 (2000).

The Cider Mills

Listed in the original table of contents but not present in this scan — if a copy turns up, it belongs here.

The First Ice Cream Cone

Payne had its glorious past shortly after the turn of the century. The land was very productive any way you looked, which was more than could be said about any other large town in the county. Tom Labb, John Sullivan and other merchants appreciated the rural patronage to their stores, and they showed this by generally having a celebration on the 4th of July.

There would be a merry-go-round, food stands and other amusement. On a platform in the center of town there was generally a speech made in the afternoon by some eminent speaker on important questions of the day.

There was a gang of us boys, Lawrence Miller, Bob, Harry & Paulus Brady and others who did not want to miss anything going on that day. We did not have much money to spend but we were slow in spending it until we all agreed on the best place to invest our money.

Everything was the same old thing that we had seen before at other street fairs, except one stand. It was located just N. of the Rail Road track on the east side of the street. A man his wife and daughter ran it and it was something different.

The mother was taking a batter of some sorts and pouring it on a grill to make what looked like a large pan cake about the size of a large plate. It was real thin being less than 1/8 in. thick. She cooked it on one side and then turned it over once. She then removed it with a cake turner to a metal platform while it was still hot.

The husband was the man who skillfully made the finished product. With a knife he would cut it into 4 pieces like you would cut up a pie. He would then pick up a piece at a time while still warm and form them into a cone, with a point at one end and the open flare top at the other end. They would rapidly cool off into a perfect cone.

In those days everyone made their own ice cream, but this stand had several freezers full of ice cream and the girl would take a home made ice cream dipper and dip out enough ice cream to fill the cone.

That was the first ice cream cone ever seen in Payne and they sold all of us boys on investing our dime in an ice cream cone. We were not alone, the whole town wanted one of those new ways of eating ice cream in a cone. The stand was a success from the start.

The Medicine Man Comes To Town

One beautiful summer day shortly after the turn of the Century a medicine man arrived in Payne with an elixir that was guaranteed to cure about everything that might be wrong with you. He arrived at noon with his team of light weight driving horses hitched to a covered wagon, in which was stocked his mysterious liquid medicine. He left his medicine show wagon at the corner of Main and Merrin street, taking his horses down to the livery stable to be fed and watered, until he was ready to leave town that night. The canvas sides of the covered wagon advertised the show that was going to be in town that night.

Not much was seen of the medicine man that afternoon. He was out arranging to set up his pigeon to act as a salesman that night, in consideration of a small compensation.

With the coming of darkness he lit his kerosene lamps on the side of the wagon that faced the street and called for a crowd to assemble. He had a banjo and sang a few songs while the crowd was assembling. As soon as the crowd gathered around the show wagon he stopped singing and started his canned speech about the wonderful medicine that had just recently been brought back from Europe, and how it was a cure all for about anything that might be wrong with you. He demonstrated how strong it was by pouring a teaspoon full of it on a piece of shoe leather. It would penetrate the leather and be seen on the underneath side of the same.

The crowd was still skeptical as to whether or not it would cure all people of everything as he said it would and they needed an example. Then he pulled his clinching argument. He asked if there was anyone in the crowd who was hard of hearing. Nig Piowas was in the crowd and everyone knew that he could hardly hear at all. He brought out a one dollar bill and bought the first bottle of the wonder medicine, some of the oil was put in his ear. Now he had a vacant stare when you talked to him and he could not hear you, but immediately after the oil was insorted he started to talk to the medicine man as if he had perfect hearing. In the rush that ensued Nig disappeared in the crowd and was seen to be going home early. He was not seen on the streets of Payne for several days, at the end of that time the strength of the medicine seemed to be gone, and he was as deaf as ever.

His first purchase was all the crowd needed, a line soon formed and everyone came forward to buy a bottle of the wonder medicine that would cure all ills.

The peddlers stock of 50 bottles of his medicine soon was all sold out and the show was over, but he promised them that he would return in the near future with more of this rare medicine, as he could obtain more of the same. He then hitched up his horses in a hurry so as to be able to get on his way to the next town where a new shipment of wonder medicine awaited him.

Everyone in the crowd who walked home that night with a bottle of this wonder medicine, later figured that they had not received any benefit from their purchase except one Irishman. Pat had a constant tickle in his throat, so as he turned East, toward home, he opened his bottle and took a nip. This helped his throat immediately, so he took another one; he arrived home with the bottle empty, but all the pains he ever had were gone. He did not come to until the next day; he had slept around the clock, but he thought that his one dollar was well spent.

The Hired Man

At the turn of the century most farms were small, not over 160 acres at least. The raising of grain was to be feed for the livestock. Half of the farm would be in crops and the other half in woods and pasture. Horses, cattle, sheep and hogs were raised to sell and produce the only farm income. The feeding and care of this livestock, as well as the milking of cattle took a lot of hand labor. As a whole one man could not do it himself.

Most families consisted of several children to help with this work, but there were exceptions. Perhaps the family would be small, or only girls that could not help with the heavy farm work, such as cutting the wood, splitting the rails for the fences, putting up the hay in the barn, etc.

On the other hand there was not the public welfare programs then to take care of orphans or boys big enough to work but who might be a little big retarded. These boys were picked up and hired or rather taken care of by farmers in need of cheap labor. They would be taken in and made a part of the family circle. They would be fed and clothed and perhaps given some spending money which they usually saved.

They were called the hired man. He could feed and milk the cows and help the farm owner in many way in the farm work. They seldom left the farm and the farm owner usually took care of his few needs. If he grew too old to do heavy work, he was assigned to lighter work or perhaps he just set around and did not work at all. It was always considered that it was the moral responsibility of the farmer to take care of his help as they grew too old to work.

These hired men seldom had any education. They could not read or write but there were quite a few of them all over the county. They seemed to disappear with the end of livestock farming.

To the grandchildren this individual was a very interesting person. He might know quite a bit about the wild animals of the woods. The different flowers might be where he was a specialist. He was very observing and could tell the children a lot of things about the animals that they did not know. He knew where could find some bitter-sweet, and which tree had the biggest hickory-nuts. He would help them in learning how to ride a horseback. They all liked the Hired Man.

Grandfather’s hired man, Tim, always came into and left the house by the back kitchen door. There was a steep stairway up stairs with a door at the bottom, and Tim slept in the small bed room at the head of the stairs. He was a sleep-walker. Grandma was always afraid he would fall down the stairs and hurt himself when he hit the stair door. Tim never awoke getting down stairs, he made for the back door, and if it was cold or rainy he would awaken out on the back porch. On warm summer nights, while still asleep he would make for the rope swing attached to a limb of the apple tree and swing for quite a while before he awoke. Our window was up and we could hear Tim swinging in the dark.

The Mud Boat

Back in 1906 there used to be more snow on the ground in Paulding than there is now. We had more woods; also there were no trucks with snow plows in front of them to remove the snow from the roads and streets.

The farmers would come to town with a team of horses hitched to what was called a mud boat. It was a low built wagon box with wide runners instead of wheels. It was built about 40 inches wide and 6-8 feet long, with side boards perhaps one foot high.

On this mud boat he might be hauling a dressed hog to bring in to sell to the local butcher shop, or in the straw and blankets might be several baskets of eggs to sell to the local grocery store, or perhaps a few pounds of homemade butter.

The grocer was glad to get these fresh products to sell. Some farmers’ wives made better butter than others, and the grocer would proudly tell who made the butter if it was good. There was no margarine sold in the stores in those days, just homemade butter. The farmer might just be bringing in some oats and corn to be ground for chicken or hog feed at the local elevators.

When there was snow on the ground there used to be a steady stream of mud boats coming into Paulding, from all directions, every day in the week.

On Saturday, when there was no school, we boys would get up early. We would take our sleds with a long 6 feet or more of rope to it and walk to the edge of town. Here we would meet a farmer coming into town to trade. He would allow us to hitch our sleds to his mud boat and hitch a ride back into town. Sometimes three or four of us would hitch our sleds to the same mud boat.

If we were lucky, as the farmer entered the elevator with a load, another mud boat would be leaving with his feed all ground, and we would hitch a ride back to the edge of town. In this way we would ride back and forth all Saturday morning in and out of town behind a mud boat.

The Coming Of The Illinois Farmers

Most of the original farmers in Paulding County came from east of the county as people migrated west, cut the timber, drained the swamps and started slowly in the raising of livestock and the growing of crops. It was a slow process as it took many years to remove the timber and tile the land to produce crops. Farms were small in the livestock era of farming and it took a long time to pay for the small farm that its owner had gone in debt for. He worked hard and did not have the modern conveniences we have to-day.

A large part of the county was a clay soil, which was heavy and hard to handle when wet. There was mud everywhere. In order to get out of this mud to travel to town, they early started to use the limestone found in the eastern part of the county to build stone pike roads out of most of the mud roads of the county. They would build the right half of the road pike and the left half mud. In this way the farmers horses that were not shod with horse shoes could get to town. At first the farmers were opposed to the building of pikes as it was an added expense they thought they could do without, but gradually they came to the building of roads that could be used when the weather was bad. They plowed the ground in the fall to let it freeze and be loose to plant in crops the next spring, but they plowed shallow because the land was heavy for the horses to plow.

By 1910 Paulding County was mostly pike roads and was pretty well cleared of timber for farming. Land was going up in value as more land being cultivated. The better land was selling from $75 to $125 per acre and several farmers were selling and moving up into Michigan where land could be bought for less money per acre.

About that time several local land dealers went out to Illinois where land was also going up in value. It was selling out there for from $200 to $250 for good land. Their land was lighter and in some cases the top soil went down several feet. It was in places sandy and they did not build pikes like Paulding County. They had large families and they longed to acquire more land for their boys to farm.

The real Estate dealers built new large two story houses with 8 or more room in the home and brought these Illinois farmers to Paulding County to sell them land. They liked the Paulding County pikes and large new houses on the same and they bought them after selling their farms in Illinois.

These farmers were different than the original farmers who were used to raising live stock. These farmers were grain farmers. They took to the use of power machinery early and taught the local farmers that it was better to plow the ground deep in the fall. They were more progressive as well as ambitious. They bought more land and farmed on a larger scale. To-day their children are our best farmers.

Some of these Illinois farmers that had come to Paulding County and bought land by 1913 were:

Near Payne: John H. Seider 1920; John Anspach 100; Wm. J. Quinlan 320; Peter Kuns 100; P.T. Bauman 80; Thomas Lentz 80; George Hottinger 120; Joseph Hottinger 120; John Ditlinger 160; John Kuhn 105.

Near Paulding: Peter Grostephan 80; Alexander Munson 100; Wm. J. Reinhart 320; John L. Temple 120; D.P. Fro 60; Peter Wilhelm 160; John K. Dager 118; Agatha De Laet 82.

Near Antwerp: Lorenz Reizing 210; Ed. Witt 80.

Near Haviland: T.H. Moore 120; George Bishop 40; Henry Bishop 40; Granville Marsh 200.

Near Scott: Eugene Rice 85; Jesse Rice 80; Harry Hunter 160.

(Acreage figures as given in the original; some are difficult to read in the source scan and may not be fully accurate.)

The Revival Meetings

In the fall of 1901 Rev. Jacob Hoffman was the pastor of the Methodist church at Paulding and David F. Helms was pastor of the same church at Fayette. They would exchange revival work with each other. They held their meetings first in Fayette and then in Paulding. Rev. Helms entered the meetings at Paulding with fear and trembling; for the winter before Dr. T.L. Wiltsee, a very able Conference Evangelist, had held a meeting there, in which more than 150 had been converted. The ground had been “burnt over” so completely that many felt there was little chance of doing much. But trusting their divine leader, the meeting was begun and continued for five weeks. How were they in vain, for more than four-score souls were won.

The two pastors visited in homes to find possible converts. Nor did they spend time discussing politics or the weather — they made direct appeals to the unsaved to yield to the Lord.

There was a man who was known as “Billy Banks” at Paulding, who was rather unstable both mentally and spiritually. He was a member of the Methodist church. He was not very well-to-do in financial matters, and the pastor had helped him more than once that he and his wife might have fuel or other needed things in his home. But his life was oft inconsistent. So the pastor sent word for him to call at the parsonage on the first Monday Rev. Helms was to be in Paulding to start preaching. Rev. Hoffman said, “Billy, we are beginning our revival meetings. I want you to come but I do not want you to take any active part in them, just stay in the background and keep still, for your life has not been consistent.” To this Billy replied, “O, I so love the ‘big meetin’s! I can hardly keep still,” “But,” said the pastor, “it is reported that you were in the saloon the other night and got drunk,” “Not as my wife knows of,” replied Billy. “Well I know of it and others do, and I want you to be a silent participator in the meetings!”

Billy came but kept quiet. On Sundays Rev. Helms remained in Paulding conducting the services. It was the custom to have an afternoon service, at which they usually has seekers. One Sunday afternoon, Billy being present, there was a very gracious service during which several were converted at the altar. When the pastor asked the members to come about the altar Billy came also. At the close, that the new members might have opportunity to express their feelings, there was a brief testimony just before dismissal. The preacher was about to pronounce the benediction when Billy broke forth in his nasal tones, “I was over to the Christian Endeavor at the Disciple Church the other night, and the young woman who led the meeting read about the narrow way and the broad way, and she said the broad way was the way to go, an’ that’s the way I’m agoin’.” Immediately the pastor said, “Let us be dismissed” and pronounced the benediction. For an anti-climax it was hard to beat Billy’s “broad way.” But that was the only speech he made during the entire series of meetings. One was enough.