Maumee River Farmer: J. W. King

(If you go to https://media.gettyimages.com/illustrations/ohio-flat-rock-township-maumee-river-florida-canal-henry-county-illustration-id120569587 and look at the original, you will see the King farm in the upper left hand corner.)

Maumee River Farmer: J. W. King                  by Alan Borer

Old maps show the farm straddling the Henry/Defiance county line.  The farm belonged to John Wesley King until he died in 1892. It was a lovely piece of ground. Mr. King owned land right along the Maumee River itself. His farm yielded the usual crops of corn, wheat, clover, and hay. King also had an extensive apple orchard, and in the spring he gathered maple sap for boiling into sugar. Living on the county line, he could choose between selling his crops in Napoleon or Defiance. Mr. King kept a diary for the year 1879, and using it we can recreate his world with some accuracy.

J. W. King was born in Ohio in 1830. We don’t know much about his origins; his father, Jessie A. King was born in 1797. He married Rachel Kepler in 1858 in Defiance, and the couple had one son, George, in 1860. The east half of his farm was in Flat Rock Township in Henry County, and the nearest post office was Florida, Ohio. J. W. King was only 61 when he died; his widow Rachel lived on until 1909.

King spent much time in late winter boiling maple sap which produced maple sugar. He began the work on March 5:

fixed for sugar making 

Two days later, the real work began:

hauled buckets around in camp tapped some

and

gathered & boiled sugar water

A month later, on April 8, they finished

boiled water finished hauled everything in

Country people in the nineteenth century, at least those who owned or rented land with maple trees, made their own sugar. Small pipes, or spiles, were hammered into trees in late winter. As the sap (King called it ‘water’) poured through the spile into a bucket, the buckets were in turn taken to ‘camp,’ where a wood fire kept the sap boiling day and night. Often a shelter and shed enclosed the boiling pots. When all the liquid boiled away, the residue was sugar – maple sugar. Long before sugar beets or cane sugar was available, families like the Kings relied on maple sugar for sweetener.

In addition to the usual corn, oats, and wheat grown on the farm, King had a large apple orchard. On January 16, King sold part of the previous year’s crop:

went to Napoleon Sold 28 chickens…3 turkeys….71 lbs apples

On April 15 and 16, he recorded:

trimmed apple trees & plowed in orchard and plowed & dragged orchard finished trimming

J. W. gathered other small fruits, including grapes, raspberries and cherries, but nothing as versatile as the apple. In October, he processed the apple crop:

put away apples & a load of potatoes picked up a load of apples to make cider

and

made 110 gallons of Cider

and

Made apple butter 13 gallons

The apple, whether stored, eaten, or used as a beverage, could not be bettered.

Possibly because J. W. only had one son, he was constantly on the lookout for hired help. In 1880, King had a 21-year old “laborer” named Samuel Richards. The year before, J. W. noted in his diary on March 3:

went to hunt a girl

And on May 5,

went to hunt a cow & look for a girl

Not until June 15 did he report success:

went & got a girl Ana Ostman [Ortman?]

By December, King hired another girl named Gusta Spangler, but whether that was to replace the June hire or was in addition, he does not say. The last few decades of the nineteenth century were just before the age of mechanized farming, and hired help was still a crucial need for Ohio farmers.

The work was unending. Fences needed mending, hickory nuts were gathered, cabbage picked and stored, harness to grease. Trips were taken to market for both buying and selling. Occasionally there was a bit of leisure; dinner with neighbors, sledding, grange meetings, trips to Napoleon, Defiance, and one time, to Toledo. But for every free afternoon, there was extra work: a lost horse, a barn raising, even jury duty! There was some free time, but not much.

On October 14, King wrote:

worked at cave in forenoon

I puzzled over this entry for awhile. Did King have a cave on his property? In such a flat area, it seemed unlikely. What Mr. King called a “cave” may actually have been a quarry. Geologists, described a quarry in 1874:

A short distance above Florida is the quarry of Wesley King and brother, in the left bank of the Maumee, it consists of the following succession of parts. . . . 

and in 1991

Old quarry along west bank of Maumee River a short distance SW of Florida, Flatrock Township. . . . What is interesting about this occurrence is that the depth of this "quarry" is extremely shallow. There is no evidence of this "quarry" on topographic maps. Therefore the new name of this locality should be: Wesley King Quarry, Florida, Henry Co., Ohio, USA.

J. W. King would probably not recognize his farm today. The countryside has fewer houses; farms are bigger. But if you want to see the area today, take a drive along Route 424 near Florida. If nothing else, you will see his countryside, and to a farmer, that is seeing a lot.