Iler Farmer Celebrated the End of World War 1 in Fostoria

There is not much left of Iler, Ohio.  Sitting roughly between Fostoria and Bettsville in Seneca County, Iler is a tad south of State Route 12 on County Road 592.  Unincorporated now, Iler lived (and died) by its location on the Nickel Plate railroad.  The village gained a post office in 1885, and offered most of the amenities that hamlets needed.  A brick and tile factory, general store, and telegraph office could be found in Iler at the turn of the last century (1900).  Never mind that the Iler railroad station was a converted boxcar; if one needed big city comforts, Toledo or Cleveland could easily be reached by rail.

A taste of Iler in its heyday can be found reading the 1918 diary of resident Robert F. Keller.  Keller (1888-1961) was a 29 year old farmer with a wife (Rose), a son and two daughters.  His father, Uzziah N. Keller, was a prominent citizen of Iler, helping organize the local Farm Bureau and teaching school for many years.  We are not sure why Robert Keller began a diary that year.  It might have had something to do with World War I.  Other than the backdrop of war, his life seemed to go on pretty much as normal (for an early twentieth century farmer). 

Let’s sample some of the entries Mr. Keller made in the pivotal month of November”

 

November 2  Saturday

We hauled in two bags of fodder.  Cleaned out horse stable.  I husk 5 shocks of corn this a.m.

++Corn was shocked earlier in the autumn.  Each individual stalk of corn was cut and propped up against a “gallus,” or a framework of four unpicked stalks.  Left to dry for several weeks, the ears of corn were husked, or the removal of the papery covers of the ears.

 

November 5 Tuesday

We helped Newcomer finish shredding [corn] at noon   Frank took us to vote   we husk this P.M.

++ Possibly Levi B. Newcomer (1843-1920)[i], a neighborhood farmer. 

 

November 6 Wednesday

We finished husking corn to day. . . . we hauled in big load this eve.

 

November  11 Monday

Garry & I husk corn for Ed Morrison to day.  I went to town tonight to march in Parade

++November 11 was the day of the armistice, or the day that Germany surrendered to the Allies.  Now celebrated as Veterans Day, crowds of patriots cheered the news, and many were the parades and celebrations in the chilly November air.  This parade was likely in Fostoria.

 

November 14 Saturday

Garry helped Ed husk corn & done chores.  I plowed.  I went to sale.

++We cannot be sure of the identity of “Garry.”  Was he a hired man, or a shirttail relative?  His name appears often in the diary; so does Ed, for that matter.  Husking corn was a tedious job, only partly helped by corn husking tools.  Keller took time off to go to a farm auction while Garry husked and husked.

 

November 18 Monday

It drizzled rain about all day.  I went up town.  I went to Lodge.  Got 50 nails.

++Keller belonged to the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal organization, and “secret society.”  Founded in 1864, the Knights still do charitable work, especially with victim of cystic fibrosis

 

November 20 Wednesday

Done chores    Garry went to town   got meat bbl.   We killed hog this pm,  Jay helped us….

 

November 21 Thursday

We cut up meat.   Tinkered around barn.  Garry went to Iler to Plow at noon.

 

November 25 Monday

We hauled in rest of corn & load of fodder   loaded up hay & Garry went to Iler to plow   I helped Masoner kill hog. . . .

++Butchering was the big chore in late November.  Rural families were still bound by the weather in 1918; butchering had to wait for freezing temperatures to preserve the meat.  Then the whole family worked as a group to kill the pig, scrape off the hair, drain the blood, and cut up the sections.  Smaller families often had help from friends and neighbors at butchering.

 

 

November 28 Thursday

We was home all day.   H. Wade B. Lord & Garryers [?] came down to hunt.  It rained   Garry had company

++By long standing tradition, Thanksgiving is a day for hunting.  You will notice that Keller and his friends did not even use the word “thanksgiving,” but this was the day appointed by president Woodrow Wilson for the holiday in 1918.  Thanksgiving falls squarely in hunting season, and given a federal holiday in late November, hunters took advantage of the day to pursue a favorite outdoor pastime.  It was also a god day for cold weather meat preservation, as mentioned above.

           

            Robert Keller ran the Iler farm until 1939, when his son, also Robert, took over.  The family stopped farming in 1948.  Robert Keller died in 1961 and is buried in Fostoria.  Iler slowly perished as the years went on.  The post office closed in 1923; the tile factory closed, and workers found jobs in Fostoria and elsewhere.  Such has been the story of many rural hamlets that could not survive in the twentieth century.           

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[i] https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/9MKZ-CJT

A Native American Favorite: Raccoon Pot Pie

 

by Alan Borer

 

            When you have new neighbors, you must be careful if they come from a different culture.  They may dress, speak, pray, and especially eat things that are not familiar to you.  This is as true today as it was 50, 100, or 200 years ago.  Certainly in the pioneer days of the Maumee Valley, two groups of people, the Native Indians and the white European settlers, had to learn to get along with each other.  Part of this effort was to learn to eat each other’s food.  And depending on the individual dish, that took some doing.

            Some of the very earliest settlers of Wood County’s Milton Township were members of the Hutchinson family.  Originating from Ohio’s Summit County (Akron), they were numerous:  James Hutchinson, the father, three daughters, and two adult sons.  Andrew Hutchinson and his wife had twelve children.  James Jr. brought his wife as well, but the couple had no children.  Five yoke of oxen and a team of horses rounded out the party of settlers.  It took ten days for the newcomers to travel from Summit County to Perrysburg in Wood County, in 1834.  The Hutchinson brood traveled along what was then called the Maumee and Western Reserve Pike.  Then an “almost bottomless” sea of mud, the oxen came in handy, because if a team got stuck in the mud, the rest of the teams could pull them out! 

Once in Perrysburg, the family proceeded to Bowling Green, which had been established and named, but not much else.  Following the (still visible) sand ridges, they slogged their way southwest  toward Milton Township, their new home.  Once arrived, the Hutchinson family raised a log cabin, reputedly taking only 48 hours to build.

Milton Township at that time was a total wilderness.  “Not a tree had been cut in the township, unless by hunters, and everything was in a state of nature.”  The exception was a large Native American community.  Andrew Hutchinson’s children quickly made friends with the native children, each group learning the other’s games.  Meanwhile, Andrew the father set about clearing ground for a pioneer farm.  He was also a very active hunter, and would often sell wild game to newcomers in exchange for farm work.  Like his children, he learned hunting skills from his native neighbors.

The cultural exchange continued apace, and dietary exchanges were no exception.  The native people enjoyed the white settler’s hominy, in addition to their own native game such as venison, raccoon, muskrat, and groundhog.  Andrew Hutchinson noted that the Indians owned copper kettles, each holding eight to ten raccoons, each of which would be “skinned and quartered, then thrown in the kettle head, feet, claws, and all.”  Mixed with hominy, the raccoons cooked down into what the Hutchinsons called “pot pie.”

Not all the settlers enjoyed this fare.  James Hutchinson found his wife by traveling back to Summit County, where he met a “rather fashionable young lady” willing to share the rigorous life of a Wood County pioneer:

About the first Sunday she was there, they went to visit their neighbors – [Native] neighbors, and of course were invited to stay for dinner.  The young Summit county bride took a look into one of the kettles and got a full sniff of the steaming coon pot-pie, which so sickened her that she had to be taken off home which amused the Indians very much.[i]

We don’t know the specifics of this story, not even the tribe to which the natives belonged.  We can guess by their residence near the Maumee River that they were Ottawa or Wyandot.  The last generation of Natives living in Ohio, they were forced to relocate to what is now Oklahoma by 1843.  Milton Township has lost almost all its forests to clear cutting, with the bulk of the land now given over to intensive agriculture.

Only the Hutchinson family was given the time and space to settle down.  Their land was near a now vanished hamlet called Groff’s Corners, “on the edge of the Jackson prairie.”  Andrew Hutchinson sold meat from his hunting, and when last heard from, was 74 years old in 1883.  Perhaps even then he missed the taste of raccoon pot pie.

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[i] Charles W. Evers, Pioneer Scrap=Book of Wood County Ohio (1910; rpt. 2008), pp. 96-97.