10 Years Ago
Week of January 22, 2015
SUGAR GROVE
Farm Paths Branch Out Like Limbs on a Tree
Most all farms used to have paths. They led out in many directions, sort of like branches on a tree.
Beginning at the house, there was a path that led one to the barn. That path was walked on every morning and night to do the chores. Sometimes in between morning and night for special reasons, such as checking on a sick cow or when a lamb was due.
Other paths led from the barn to the hog pen. A deeply engraved path was made by the hooves of cows as they followed it to and from the pasture each morning and evening for milking time.
Then, there were paths that went to the hen house where mother would feed and water the flock. Many homes did not have running water or inside plumbing. That meant there was a path to the well, along which many pails of water needed for cooking were carried. During the winter months, extra trips had to be made to carry water for heating.
In the summer, a path led to the garden. Then, in the fall, a path led to the cellar where canned goods and other foods were stored. Another path led to the clothesline and wash house. There was also a path to the garage. Another path was traveled by all family members a number of times each day…the path to the outhouse. Sometimes a field had a path which served as a handy shortcut for visiting relatives, or provided a shortcut to the country one-room school.
Most of these farm paths no longer exist since life has changed so much in the last 50 years. There is no longer a hen house or pig pen, and most homes have running water, attached garages, and indoor plumbing. Barns are almost icons, and should the barn still exist, chances are a tractor or truck delivers their feed. Grass now covers the paths to the well and the outhouse, which no longer stand. The outhouse is now a memory, just like the path going to it.
Wash is seldom seen flapping on the clothesline since the washer and dryer have replaced the hard work of washing clothes. There are fewer gardens, and fewer paths leading to them. Purchasing groceries at the grocery store is so much easier.
No one walks across the field to visit the next door neighbors; some folk don’t even know who lives on the next farm! The country one-room school is but a memory for a few, and not even remembered by most. There are no longer paths leading to it across the pastures.
40 Years Ago
Week of January 17, 1985
HOPEWELL
Snow and Freezing Doesn’t Stop Mail Lady
The secondary roads being so slippery from snow and freezing temperatures, our mail lady, Letha Kisamore, is doing an excellent job delivering the mail on time. In another era, the mail was delivered by horse. Oftentimes the snow fell so heavily, it would change the landscape, obliterating the cut off paths. The rider would have to depend on the horse’s instinct to lead the way. The writer carried the mail, filling the saddle bags with grain for the horse to eat and a mail bag slung over the shoulder. Away the mail would travel. The key post office was the feeding quarters. The writer carried the mail on a horse that had weak ankles. One day the animal fell with her right foot trapped in the stirrup—the horse flat on its back with its four feet flailing in the air. The late Harness Ruddle heard her screams, came in her rescue and lifted up the horse and freed her. She showed her gratitude by shaking his hand.
Week of January 24, 1985
Temperature Plunges
To 20 Below Zero
In County
Pendleton County is emerging from one of the most frigid spells of winter weather that local residents have experienced in recent years.
Temperatures Monday morning were reported as low as 22 degrees below zero resulting in many frozen water lines and forcing schools and factories to close.
SENECA ROCKS
–30° On Hunting
Ground Monday
The weather reading in our area this Monday morning was from 10 to 28 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. With snow and ice on the highway several people did not go to work.
DAHMER
Arctic Air Brings
Bone Cold Weather
To Man and Beast
The cold blasts of Arctic air accompanied by brisk winds brought bone chilling weather to man and beast. Sunday evening the thermometer at Mrs. Mary Propst’s showed -21. Monday morning at Vernon Propst’s the temperature was -20 degrees. Also at Ralph Vandevander’s on Smith Creek, a -20 was recorded, with a continuous strong wind blowing which made conditions outside almost unbearable.
Some other bad weather of yesteryears remembered is the Siberian Deepfreeze on Christmas Day 1983. The west snowfall on October 10, 1979, broke trees and played havoc with power lines. On Easter Sunday, the thick coat of ice on trees and power lines was again in evidence and again payed the price for low temperatures. The cold January of 1977 is when so many water lines froze deep within the ground that it was followed by a severe drought in the summer of 1977. It became necessary to sell livestock early for without water there was no hay and no pasture for the cattle.
50 Years Ago
Week of January 23, 1975
Five Inch Snow
Falls In County
Ole Man Winter paid another visit to Pendleton County the first of the week dumping an average of five inches of snow on the county Sunday night and Monday.
The snow was followed by a cold blast Monday night sending the temperature down to five degrees above zero.
60 Years Ago
Week of January 21, 1965
Canadian Couple
Marooned Here
On Honeymoon
A newly wed Toronto, Canada, couple were marooned here last Thursday when their automobile struck a rock which had just rolled off the bank into US Rt. 220 about six miles south of Franklin.
Mr. and Mrs. Ernest H. Green were on their way to St. Petersburg, Florida, to spend their honeymoon when the mishap occurred causing them to spend their honeymoon time in Franklin.
The couple was married in Toronto January 9 and left two days later for the South. They are both retired Salvation Army officers.
Mr. Green will be 74 years old in May and Mrs. Green was 63 her last birthday. Both have been married and widowed. Mr. Green was born in London, England, and came to Canada with a friend in 1911 and worked with the Salvation Army all his life. His father, mother and sister were also Salvationists. He retired in 1956.
Mr. Green is a survivor of the sinking of the ship Empress in which over 1000 persons perished including his parents and sister. The ship sank in the St. Lawrence River nine minutes after colliding with another vessel in 1914.
Mrs. Green was born in Belgium and came to Canada 57 years ago where she spent her life as a Salvationist. The Greens were close associates in their lifes’ work.
The couple was still stranded here Wednesday at noon awaiting parts to repair their 1964 Buick. They plan to return to Canada by Monday.
Power Line Built
To North Fork
Transmission and distribution crews of Monongahela Power Company have completed a major project of running a 34.5 kv electric power line from the sub-station north of Franklin across North Mountain to the Germany Valley Limestone Company. The new plant, a division of Greer Limestone Company of Morgantown, is located 15 miles north of Franklin on Route 33.
100 YEARS AGO
By LON K. SAVAGE
Editor’s Note—The following is one of a series of articles on the Civil War. Each weekly installment covers events which occurred exactly 100 years ago.
Lee’s Army Destitute
As South’s Spirit Sags
The spirit of the Confederacy—which had been perhaps its most powerful natural resource during four years of Civil War—slumped heavily 100 years ago this week.
The fall of Fort Fisher on the North Carolina Coast, closing off Wilmington as the South’s last seaport, was what set off the despondency. But that blow, bad as it was, would not have mattered had it not come as the latest in an almost continuous series of disasters to the Southern cause. With their country cut off from all outsiders except the Federal soldiers who were waging war, Southerners began to realize their grand war for independence was becoming a dying rebellion.
Confederate War Clerk John B. Jones in Richmond wrote of the morale problem with accuracy on January 17, 1865: “The news of the fall of Wilmington and the cessation of importations at that port falls upon the ears of the community with stunning effect.”
On the streets, discontent spread among the people. On every front was more disaster. At home, shortage was the byword. The Confederate dollar was almost worthless because of inflation. Flour sold in Richmond one day at $1,000 per barrel. Clothing, meat and other necessities could hardly be had. And now, there was no promise of anything coming through from outside.
The Richmond Whig of January 17 tried to bolster morale: “The Confederacy can survive the loss of Fort Fisher and Mobile and any other seaport in its possession, but it cannot survive loss of spirit and determination . . . We lost New Orleans and survived. We lost the navigation of the Mississippi River and survived. We lost Savannah and survived . . .”
But the response was minimal. At the front, enlistments continued downward, desertions continued upward. A Richmond church called upon the ladies to knit socks for the soldiers, and it produced the handiwork of only five women.
In the Confederate Congress, politicians heaped blame on Confederate President Jeff Davis, and the Richmond Examiner fanned this blaze and called for the naming of General Lee as a military director.
Along the 50-mile front around Richmond and Petersburg, Lee, meanwhile, looked upon his dwindling army with dismay.
Only the week before, he had written the Secretary of War that his army had only two days’ rations, and now some soldiers had gone three days without meat. In one regiment, only 50 men had shoes. All of the soldiers were ragged, thin, hungry, destitute.
All food within miles of the lines had been cleaned out. Railroads were necessary to bring more in, and Yankees continually ripped up the railroads and bombarded the trains. Wagon trains with horses were organized to bring in food, but the job was too much even for the horses, starved as they were for want of fodder.
Jones entered in his diary of January 23 that the bad news and bad weather “predisposed both the people and the army for peace.”
Next week: Efforts for peace.
70 Years Ago
Week of January 20, 1955
Farm Bureau Is World’s Largest Body of Farmers
Those who join the Pendleton County Farm Bureau are also members of the West Virginia Farm Bureau, which is the largest general organization of its kind in West Virginia, and also of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the world’s largest independent organization of farmers.
With a state-wide membership of 5,000 in 49 counties in West Virginia and a total membership of more than 1,500,000 member families in 48 states and Puerto Rico, Farm Bureau is by all odds the most significant farm movement in the history of America. Membership has increased more than a million members during the past ten years, and Farm Bureau is the first farm organization in the history of the United States to be organized in all of the 48 states.
Another significant measure of the success and stability of the Farm Bureau movement was shown in the past two or three years. During this period, the cost-price squeeze has hit farmers seriously, but during the same time, Farm Bureau membership has grown. All indications are that this time farmers are determined not to abandon their organized voice during times of economic difficulty.
Now more than 34 years old, the West Virginia Farm Bureau has long served as the organized voice of agriculture in the Mountain State, and has represented the state’s farmers during the sessions of the state legislature. The organization has been particularly active in such matters as secondary roads, farm cooperative legislation, mutual insurance, dog laws, agricultural research and education, tax programs, and many others, including an active role in the adoption of the 1933 property classification amendment to the state constitution.
Policies of both state and national organizations are decided by the members and their delegates who attend annual meetings for the purpose of fixing policies for the year ahead.
