Literary Farming With My Chinese Uncle

This article was published in Farming magazine, Summer 2003, p. 52. Although written in the present tense, I should mention that Guo Liujin died in the summer of 2008.

Literary Farming with my Chinese Uncle
With fragments from some great Chinese writers and poets.


“If something is thought out carefully, it will succeed; if not it will fail; this is a universal truth. It is very rare that a person works and yet gains nothing. On the other hand, there is never any harm in trying too hard.” Chen Pu, The Craft of Farming, 1149 AD

I have looked at and studied many a farm, including the story of my father’s parents and grandparents, and how they lost the farm. My wife’s uncle still is a traditional farmer, but far away from American traditional farming. He lives in the Jiangxi province of China.

Like many farmers he found plenty to complain about in the modern world. On a visit to his brother, my father-in-law, in the big city of Guangzhou, he was bored out of his mind. He couldn’t help but use a farmer’s scale of values to judge the things he saw there. When taken to a nice restaurant, he complained that his meal cost 300 yuan, whereas he could easily sell a pig at home for 400. Imagine, a single meal costing nearly the same as a pig!

Uncle Guo (he is called “little uncle” by his extended family because he is the youngest of his brothers) is, in some ways, a throwback to rural people everywhere. He cannot read or write, he farms a small acreage, and keeps a mixed farm where he grows rice, and keeps pigs, chickens, and other livestock. Like many rural people, is somewhat bemused by the modern, flashy lifestyle he sees in cities. But many farmers and gardeners would find things to admire about Uncle Guo’s farm and his farming. Which of us has not yearned for a small, mixed farm where if one crop or flock fails, one can always relay on something else?

This essay will recount some observations on Uncle Guo and his farm, and by extension, offer some observations on the life of a small farmer in China. Family farming in China is basically unexplored country. I am thinking specifically of farming as a cultural artifact, not a scientific or mechanical study. Not so much how a much a particular crop yields, but how an individual works and cares to make a plant grow and feed his family and livestock. Uncle Guo has farmed all his life, and his seen many changes, but as with many changes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“The universe is but a tenement
Of all things visible. Darkness and day
The passing guests of time. Life slips away,
A dream of little joy and mean content. Li Po(702-762 ), The Guild of Good-fellowship


The youngest of six children, Guo Liujin was born on August 15, 1938 in Jian City, Jiangxi Province. Unlike his brother, my father-in-law, he received very little schooling and still speaks a difficult local dialect. His father, Guo Jiechai, was born in 1880, a subject of the Emperor of China.

As viewers of The Last Emperor know, China has had no emperor since 1912, and has been a Communist Party-ruled state since 1949. Uncle Guo would have seen the revolution as a child. And he would have seen changes. Rural Chinese lived in earthen huts before the Revolution; afterwards, homes of fired brick became the rule. Television, and quite recently, telephones, came to rural China. Roads, not always paved, but usable, opened the modern world to some extent.

“The serious problem is the education of the peasantry. The peasant economy is scattered, and the socialization of agriculture, judging by the Soviet Union's experience, will require a long time and painstaking work. Without socialization of agriculture, there can be no complete, consolidated socialism.” Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976), Quotations from Chairman Mao TseTung

The 1949 revolution brought several changes. But it was the 1967-1976 “Cultural Revolution” that disrupted life more thoroughly. An effort to bring the entire populace of China into line with the thinking of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the cultural revolution caused mass dislocation, interruption of jobs and families, as thousands were relocated to the country from the city, and vice versa.

My wife’s father and mother were taken from city jobs as educators and made to labor in the countryside. Uncle Guo, however, went through the turmoil of those times relatively unscathed. Such was the rural isolation of his world that self-criticism, ‘Little Red Books’ and being re-educated did not mean too much for him. He was married in 1962, and during the tumult of the 1960’s happily ignored such Party novelties as the “one child” law that struggled to keep China’s population down. Uncle Guo has six children, and in the son-centered culture of rural China daughters simply aren’t counted, even if they be many.


Uncle Guo’s sons are still in the neighborhood. Such is his skill as a farmer that, while his sons still live in the neighborhood, they only farm part-time, and do odd jobs for cash money. Their father farms full time to keep everyone going.

“Methinks there’s a genius
Roams in the mountains,
Girdled with ivory
And robed in wisteria…” Chu Yuan (Fourth century BC), The Land of Exile

That his sons, or he himself for that matter, have land to call their own may seen odd to westerners. Before the Cultural Revolution, farmers in the village had no land to call their own. They farmed state-owned farms. After the hubbub died down after 1976, farmers were one again allocated land of their own. The government requires a certain percentage of their production, but beyond that, they are free to consume or sell on the open market, the yields of their labor.

In the West, we are careful of the right of land ownership. Our county courthouses are stacked to their ceilings with years of real estate transfers, tax lists, and wills showing which family members inherited grandpa’s land. But for Uncle Guo and others in his situation in China, land ‘ownership” is not clear cut. Guo farms the same land as his ancestors, but has seen several changes in how this land is held. As a young man, he lived in the village, and was sent out to work land that the government owned, planned for, and decided what, when, and why to plant.

Since the Cultural Revolution, Uncle Guo has been given land to farm however he sees fit. He still must provide a quota of rice to the state, but beyond that he can make his own decisions about what to plant, when to harvest, and how to sell off the surplus.

“They stopped to look and saw a farmhouse with a lamp shining brightly in the window.” Wu Chengen (13th century AD), Journey to the West.

Uncle Guo lives near the village of Taishan in the county of Wanfu. His sons live close by, and he himself lives in a cement house of two floors. The ground floor is his living space. His wife, Lo Quiying, and one child live in approximately 300 square meters of floor space. The upper floor is the barn, where harvested crops are stored. A separate small building contains the kitchen and its wood fires (there is no other fuel available at present) and toilet.

We might marvel at the Chinese toilets (marvel at but not necessarily want to use!). Uncle Guo’s toilet has no flushing mechanism, but is connected to a pump which makes it easier to apply the human waste to his fields. There is no stigma or squeamishness about this. In keeping 1.2 billion people fed, fertilizer must be found and used wherever and however it occurs. Uncle Guo and many Chinese farmers now use chemical fertilizers, but use it as an addition to, not a replacement for, human dung. Keep that in mind next time you have to ‘go.’

There is another small building beside the house, a shed where the Guo family livestock are housed. In this cramped building are housed cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, and the water buffalo who is responsible for most of the farm’s heavy work. The water buffalo, incidentally, does not have a name in this unsentimental world.

Although Uncle Guo’s son has gone modern enough to get hold of a tractor, the water buffalo on Uncle’s farm does most of the plowing, spring and fall. Otherwise, most of the labor of the farm is done with that useful instrument, the human back and arms. Before the 1949 Revolution, the farm produced one crop of rice per year, plus a crop of soybeans and sweet potatoes on alternating years. Since the Revolution and a new dam that brought additional water to the neighborhood, two crops of rice per year are now possible.

“Grain and cotton cloths come to us from the earth. They are produced in due season by the labor of man…” Chao Tso, (?-155 B.C.), On the Value of Agriculture

The farm comprises about eight mu [a mu is roughly 100 square meters]of land. In that space, Uncle Guo cares for a rice field, a soybean field, a vegetable garden, and the house and outbuildings. The word “farm” in our vocabulary brings up mental images of “Land, spreading out so far and wide.” In China, a farm is what a person can work, and while Uncle Guo does not mind borrowing his son’s tractor for heavy work, he and his wife and children still provide the labor for the small farm. More acreage might mean hiring laborers, and that would be too expensive.

The water buffalo provides labor for the farm in the spring and autumn as, dragging the plow for soil preparation in spring, and turning up ripe sweet potatoes in the fall. And the noise of the water buffalo must sometimes be the only sound in that rural world. At least until the TV comes on in the evenings. The family diet depends on their work that they and their animals provide. Since meat brings in money on the open market, the occasional pig or chicken that disappears is sold, not eaten. Thus, the Guo family eats a mostly vegetarian diet as a result of this fact of economics.

As in our own past, harvests are cause for celebrations, as the family gathers first as a labor force, and then sits down to a big family meal. Other celebrations occur throughout the lifecycle. Chinese New Year is celebrated with annual feasting, fireworks, and wintertime relaxation. And in this Communist, materialist state, the local farmers of Taishan are still as likely to pray to the gods at a temple as see a doctor. Buddha, like Jesus to many of our own farmers, is a sure refuge for those with medical complaints.

Weddings, too, are celebrated in traditional style. One tradition that is widespread is the dowry which must be paid by the bridegroom to his father-in-law. His parents are expected to sponsor the wedding banquet. Her parents buy the dress and wedding makeup. And on Chinese New Year, a newly married couple is expected to bring gifts of a chicken or pig, although in urban China, money has replaced the livestock.

My garden plants bring no relief from sorrow;
I advise you: never be born a woman-
Wealthy or humble, you will end sorrowful all the same…
Shen Yixiu (1590-1635), An Autumn Night in Jinling

In rural China, sad and sorry is a women’s lot. Although things are changing for the better in some areas, women are definitely considered a man’s lower, unequal partner. Although Uncle Guo’s wife works as hard on the farm as he does, she is meant to do all the childrearing plus farmwork. Even in so small a thing as mealtime sitting, women get short shrift, as male guests sit at the table and eat, expecting the women to take their places later after the men are finished.

Another difference in rural China is how funerals are celebrated. The Party decrees cremation, but in Uncle Guo’s countryside, people still uses coffins and earth burial. A rural Chinese funeral is a noisy, flamboyant affair with people wearing special clothes. Drums and cymbals are central to the funeral, as is yet another dinner for family and friends.

“No travelers came to this remote spot,
And only wild flowers bloomed before the gate.” Wu Chengen, Journey to the West.

In this essay, we can get but a glimpse of Guo Liujin and his working farm. Uncle Guo enjoys farming, just as his niece has happily tilled American soil in our small American garden. Life being what it is, I will probably never see his farm, although I’d like to meet him. I’d like to see his rice crop and meet his unnamed water buffalo. But writing is cathartic, and if sketching his life can bring me at least to the imagined hinterland of my Chinese uncle’s farm, then it’s worth the trip.


[I cannot adequately express my thanks to Guo Liujin, or to his brother, my father-in-law Guo Jinyuan. This was all made possible by Guo Jie, my wife, and an excellent gardener herself. She did most of the asking and translating for her guilo husband.]

The Memory of Bears

A Bend of the River draft. [Readers should not misinterpret: I am against hunting bears. The only people I could forgive bear hunting are Native Americans.]

The Memory of Bears by Alan Borer

The bear is an animal at once very familiar and yet rarely encountered. The bear has become an icon of childhood toys and stories. Who among us don’t know of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Brown Bear, or Winnie-the-Pooh? Who has not given a favorite child a teddy bear? Or seen bears advertising everything from Coca-Cola to toilet paper? Yet how many of us have actually seen a wild bear? Not many, for the bear, like many other high-on-the-food-chain fauna, have become scarce. Human pressure and loss of habitat, due to everything from urban sprawl to global warming (in the case of polar bears) have made the bear the most familiar but least seen animal to modern people.

I have lived most of my life in Ohio. There are bears in southeast Ohio that occasionally stray in from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But the closest I’ve ever come to a bear was seeing a fresh bear paw print on a vacation trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The nearest you can get to a bear in Northwest Ohio is at the Toledo Zoo. Yet before the advent of European settlement, the Maumee Valley teemed with bears, who lingered into the 1850s.

So to find bear stories of the Maumee Valley, we must turn to those dusty, laboriously compiled county histories published in the last decades of the nineteenth century. There, local historians recorded the fading memories of pioneer settlers, who often had at least one bear story.

In his 1888 history of Toledo, Clark Waggoner claimed that bears “were very numerous, particularly in Wood, Henry, Defiance, Williams, Paulding and Van Wert Counties. Their practice of hibernating in hollow trees throughout the winter, made them little more than skin and bones when they came forth in the Spring. (p. 28)” Following his suggestion, we present four bear stories from those counties, two from Wood County, and two from Defiance County. Even this briefest glimpse at the bears of our past reveals several bear behaviors: denning, hibernating, and the ability to eat most anything (especially pigs brought to the wilderness by primitive farmers).

Wood County, Liberty Township

“From facts related in 1884, by Mrs. Ann Forest and Frank Cowden, of New Rochester, to C. S. Van Tassel, it is learned that the last wild bear seen in Freedom, was in 1851. Mrs. Eli Colvin, a neighbor of Mrs. Joseph Myers, called at the latter's home one day in the fall of that year, and while they were in the house talking, their attention was arrested by the squealing of a pig near by. Being curious to apprize themselves of the difficulty, they started in search of the apparently discomforted porker. They had gone but a few rods from the house when they perceived it in the woods a short distance outside of a fence by which they stopped where the poor fellow was being unmercifully hugged by a bear! Mrs. Colvin was the taller of the two ladies, and saw the bear first, when she made for the house. Mrs. Myers was a brave lady, and proposed to see it, too; so she advanced a little farther, and sure enough there was bruin hugging the pig and biting at its throat; but on perceiving Mrs. Myers he immediately dropped the object of his affections and made tracks for the wilderness. (p. 257)

Wood County, Milton Township

“A son of Henry Dubbs, named above, writing in 1895, says:....One fall our neighbor, Mr. Lathrop, had to go to Perrysburg to pay taxes. His wife had but recently died, and his children were too small to be left alone at the house, so my brother and sister and I went to stay over night with them, making a family of seven children at the cabin. We had a good time, but in our thoughtlessness we neglected to provide wood for the night; the wood-pile was out next to the corn-crib, and when about 8 o'clock, our wood was gone, we were afraid to venture forth in the dark for more. The woods at that time were infested by various kinds of wild animals. Finally my brother, John O., who afterward fell, in the war of the Rebellion, said he was not afraid to go out; but just as he was lifting up some wood he saw a large bear in front of him at the crib, eating corn, at the same time snarling as if offended at the boy's presence. John rushed in badly scared, and we threw out fire-brands to drive the beast off, but it paid no attention to us. We went to bed, after first covering up the fire. Bruin's tracks next morning, in the snow, showed plain enough that there had been no mistake as to the kind of caller we had the night before. (pp. 321-22)



Defiance County, Milford Township

“My eldest brother, Elias, while once chasing some deer on horseback, found a bear’s track, and found, also, that old bruin had been back-tracking himself; he had heard that the bear, just before burrowing up for the winter, would turn and follow his back track, to avoid detection of his winter quarters...The next morning....we found he had gone into a large hollow sycamore tree. The tree forked about twenty feet from the ground, and right in the fork of the tree was the entrance into the trunk. The bear was in the tree, down next to the ground....We heard a mighty scratching in the tree, and out came the bear. As he looked around, brother fired, and we supposed he had shot him, for he fell to the ground like a puffball. The dogs went for him, but the bear commenced rolling over and over, and finally freed himself from the dogs, and away he went.” (p. 328)

Defiance County, Milford Township

“Mr. Pierce had a fine lot of young shoats that fed on the mast in the forest. One afternoon these pigs came up the path very much frightened – bristle up. He observed that something had happened [to] the pigs. He took his ax and went down the path with his dog, who was a good hunter. It was not a great while till his dog raised a fierce yell. Mr. P. hastened to the spot, and found that his dog had brought a large bear to a halt, the dog seizing him in the rear whenever he moved. By urging his dog, the bear was made to climb a large tree, having two branches, or a fork. Bruin took a seat in the fork, and looked defiantly about. Mr. P. looked bout to see if he could find a tree that would dislodge the bear, but no tree would reach his position. He made a careful examination, and found that the bear tree would reach a large sycamore, across which he proposed to cut the bear tree, so that the fork would strike the bear and dislodge it. This was done, and when the tree fell, unfortunately it did not impale the bear, but broke the fork and tore down a large number of trees, and during the fall bruin made his escape. Mr. P. found, on further examination, that bruin had dined on his missing pig.” (pp. 325-26)

It is unfortunate that the recollections of Maumee Valley bears that exist are mostly hunting stories, and that the attitude of the early settlers of our area was that bears were better off dead. Once this area became a farming country, the bears were doomed. Bears need large, wooded landscapes in which to roam. Bears were, perhaps understandably, bad tempered around humans. But they were magnificently large, powerful animals that have rightfully captured our imaginations, and will survive in pioneer stories for many years to come.

[These bear stories are found in Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio (Chicago, 1897), and History of Defiance County, Ohio (Chicago, 1883).]

William Miller, Elberta Peaches, and the Ohio Connection

William Miller, Elberta Peaches, and the Ohio Connection


In our modern prepackaged, throwaway society, there seems to be nothing more natural than that fuzz coated morsel of nature, the peach. It is unfortunate that for most of us, eating a peach involves opening a can full of syrup, and digging out either squishy or crunchy chunks tasting mainly of refined sugar and recognized as a peach only because its color is vaguely yellow.

Yet those who are wily still can find and appreciate a variety of fresh peaches. One of our comrades in peach appreciation was a farmer from our own backyard. William Miller, a farmer and orchardist near Port Clinton, grew peach trees, and perhaps by being a cheapskate, gave to us in Ohio a great natural gift: the freestone, yellow, tasty Elberta peach.

Peaches have a lengthy history. The ancient Greeks knew about peaches, but as with so many things, the Chinese were familiar with peaches long before. Kung Futzu (Confucius) mentioned peaches, and China was growing peaches thousands of years before the Greeks. North America was introduced to peaches in 1629. Peach orchards were widely planted in the United States in the years following the Revolution. American peach growing hit a peak in the years from 1875 to 1890, when disease caused a decline in the business.

In the meantime, Elberta peaches were becoming America’s favorite variety of peach. They originated in Marshallville, Georgia in about 1870, when a farmer named Samuel H. Rumph planted pits from a Chinese Cling peach tree. The tree that grew from some of these seeds was pollinated by who-only-knows what natural orchard. Rumph, whose wife’s name was Elberta, named the fruit of this tree after his spouse at the suggestion of friends of hers who had tasted them. Elberta peaches spread throughout the American South, California and even to Michigan.

Cut now to our Ohio orchardist, William Miller. Born in 1844, he was a native of Portage Township in Ottawa County, Ohio. He served in the Union army during the Civil War. A modest man, Miller was fascinated with fruit, and while he owned a fine farm, also tinkered with fruit varieties. He planted his first orchard near Gypsum, Ohio, in 1868. Allegedly he considered grapes first, but his devout father gently suggested that he plant anything but the source of wine. But he did raise Bartlett pears, Baldwin apples, English walnuts, and a variety of other trees.

Miller was fond of fruit, and was always looking for something new. In 1892, a chance acquaintance with a man from Georgia tipped him off to the existence of the Elberta peach. He learned that there were one thousand Elberta trees ready to be planted, and he purchased them and planted them, the first Elbertas in Ohio. Curious neighbors watched the experiment, and were astounded when the crop brought as high as $3.25 a bushel. The Miller family proudly preserved the purchase receipt for the purchase of those first Ohio Elbertas.

Miller’s Gypsum-area farm contained 190 acres at the beginning of the twentieth century, about 55 of it in peaches. Apples, cherries, pears, plums, and a handful of cattle in a mixture of pasture and woodlot made up the rest. Oddly, Miller grew about eight acres of tomatoes, but he did that mainly to keep his orchard helpers busy during the off season. Between pruning, spraying, and harvesting there was little time wasted. Miller preferred married men as laborers, believing them to be more “reliable.”

William Miller was an active businessman in the Catawba Island fruit farming industry. He served as president of the Ohio Horticultural Society, and took an interest in the Elberta Hotel, where fruit brokers stayed when buying up the year’s crop. He lived in a fine house near Gypsum, and turned a profit which, if not spectacular, was solid. Death came to Miller January 28, 1914.

The world of orchards and fruit packing in Ottawa County has declined to a shadow of its former self. In the 1920s, roadside stands began to replace the commercial fruit companies. Always marginal because of spring cold snaps which killed peach blossoms, many farmers gave up growing fruit on the Catawba peninsula. Suburban sprawl has also taken its toll, as vacation homes and tourism have taken the place of fruit trees as the main land use of the area.

There may no longer be many chances to see peach blossoms flickering in spring sunlight, or smell the heady fragrance of peach picking, or taste peach juice rolling down your chin. But if you do see a roadside stand in the neighborhood of Port Clinton that advertises fresh Elberta peaches, get one, and think of modest William Miller. He would approve of your choice.


[The Miller family has a vast collection of letters, papers, and photographs at the Center for Archival Collections, Bowling Green State University. From it, I found especially helpful material in the October 27, 1904 edition of The National Stockman and Farmer, and an unattributed obituary clipping by one S. R. Gill. H. P. Gould, Peach-Growing (New York, 1918), discusses the origins of peach growing on pp. 1-4, 10-11.]

George Baker Gives Witness to Toledo in 1876

Another from Bend of the River.

George Baker Gives Witness to Toledo in 1876

I read lots of mail. I get my share of junk mail, email, and the occasional “real” letter, but I also spend time reading the mail of long ago. As a historian who is also a stamp collector, I often get to look at letters saved in archives and libraries, and the occasional stamp show or postcard box at flea markets. And it is fun (to me) to read past the ancient health complaints and family news to find an occasional reference to national or state affairs. Such news is contained at a letter that came to hand from one George Baker.

George Baker (1832 -1910) did many different things during his lifetime. He was a nurseryman, and co-owned a commercial nursery in Toledo on Bancroft Street called Fahnestock and Baker. Baker’s 1910 obituary described him as “an enthusiastic horticulturist.” But during his time as a nurseryman, Baker also was president of the Metropolitan Street Railway, which in 1872 built a pioneering streetcar line from Summit to Lagrange. This streetcar route was not a financial success, so an expanded route was formed in 1878. Baker’s streetcars ran on Cherry Street, Bancroft, and St. Clair Avenue, and later reached Broadway in the South End In 1880, he was worth $60,000 in combined real and personal property, and lived with his wife Fidelia in a comfortable home on Chestnut Street, well-to-do if not actually rich, with two servants to wait on his family.


Centennial

The letter Mr. Baker addressed to his “friend Blair’ (George Blair of Fairmont, West Virginia) is dated November 9, 1976, and deals mainly with how much money Blair owes Baker, and politely points out various options for repayment. But what is more interesting to we moderns was Bakers opening lines of the letter:

“Home again. Centennial has been canvassed, and I am fully convinced of its necessity (?). Its equal has never been seen on the globe. And what is a good thing, it has been a financial success, notwithstanding the hardness of the times.”

It appears that Baker had visited the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, and found the trip quite a spectacle. Just what did Baker see?

The 1876 Centennial Exhibition was one of the grand shows of the second half of the nineteenth century. Just as many of us remember the bicentennial of 1976 and its patriotic falderal, the nation celebrated the 1876 100th anniversary of American independence by presenting what was in effect a world’s fair in Philadelphia.

The Centennial, which was visited by hordes of people, was one of the great building projects of the century. Twenty-four buildings were constructed by various states of the Union (coincidentally, one of the only surviving building is the Ohio Building). Other buildings were constructed by the various foreign nations which participated. Brazil, Turkey, Egypt, and other then-exotic nations displayed their culture and their wares.

But the high point of the Exhibition was the various displays of American ingenuity and invention. Alexander Graham Bell showed his recently invented telephone. Railroads were major exhibitors, as were makers of cloth, agricultural machinery, and new methods of canning and preserving. The arm of the yet-to-be assembled Statue of Liberty was sent from France, where American’s gawked at a gift they weren’t sure they even wanted.

The Centennial Exhibition started off slow. After a first day crowd of 200,000 on May 10, hot weather kept attendance down, with only about 20,000 to 30,000 per day. But once September and cooler fall weather came, attendance reached 82,000 per day. Even more visited in October, and in early November, the average was nearly 100,000 daily. The fair closed on November 10, 1876.

The Centennial Exhibition was a fatiguing event for many visitors. The relentless noise and the impact of room after room and building after building of new inventions were almost overwhelming. “The crowd, the cacophony, the sheer visual pressure of the exhibition – it was all enough to make visitors want to flee this space for the relative peace of the park-like grounds....the most interesting thing to the people was the people themselves...an exhausting, mind-numbing experience.” (pp. 152-53, Giberti)

Interestingly, and in contradiction to Baker’s letter, The Philadelphia Exhibition was a money loser. Baker was writing the day before the Exhibition closed, and its coordinators found themselves in the red when they tallied their expenses and fees. Yet it was a milestone of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as George Baker suggested.

Boom Town


There is a great deal of building going on, just commencing new structures – While I was away two weeks. A fine two story brick residence & cost $8000 – was commenced & walls put up to the 2d story on a lot on the corner diagonally across from my residence, and on corner of Superior & Locust (3 squares toward town from me) a brick block of six dwellings is up to 1st floor & so on all over the city-

George Baker didn’t give us quite the specifics of what buildings he saw going up. His description is correct on one point: his Chestnut Street address is three blocks from the corner of Superior and Locust. This places him as a resident of the Vistula neighborhood. Toledo grew very rapidly in the years after the Civil War. The national economy boomed, swamps were drained, and there was money to be made in real estate, which probably explains why Baker traded nursery work for land. The “hardness of the times” Baker referred to earlier was the Panic of 1873. Unchecked speculation and freebooting by speculators in President Grant’s second term caused the economy to implode.


Local Boy Makes Good?

We are still hoping & believing in the Election of Hayes-

One of the oddest stories in American political history was beginning to take shape in November of 1876, as Baker points out in his brief P.S. 1876 was an election year in the United States, but not unlike the 2000 election, Election Day did not result in a clear cut winner. Here is the story behind Baker’s “hoping and believing.”

The 1876 election was between a Democrat, New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden, and the Republican Governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes, whose home was in nearby Fremont, Ohio, went to bed on election night believing he had lost to Tilden. But Republican Party strategists noted that in several southern states, still occupied after the Civil War, the election results were fragmentary or confusing. If those occupied states could be made to give their Electoral College votes to Hayes, he, not Tilden, would become President.

Months of wrangling over these disputed results finished with the creation of an Electoral Commission. The Commission received two sets of election results from the disputed states, one Democratic and the other Republican. Since the Commission had a Republican majority in its membership, it was probably a foregone conclusion that the election results presented by Republican tabulators were accepted, and Hayes was declared the winner in the Electoral College, 185-184. As President, Hayes removed federal troops from the “reconstructed” Southern states in what was seen as a bid to return sovereignty to them. The man from Fremont avoided electoral anarchy in the south, but had to watch as Republicans, including many African-Americans, were turned out of office and a solidly Democratic south lived under a fictitious “separate but equal” regime for almost 75 years.

George Baker told us many other things about some of his financial dealings, numbers which are now garbled and probably untraceable. But since we can’t listen in on his conversations, this letter may be the only way of hearing the thoughts of a man long gone. Only by reading his letter can we glimpse what was on the mind of George Baker in 1876, and what one Toledoan was thinking of events long past.

[Besides the letter itself, George Baker’s 1910 obituary in the Toledo Blade summarizes his career. I also used Stefan Lorant, The Glorious Burden: The American Presidency [1968], and Bruno Giberti, Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia [2002]. I wish to thank Michael Lora of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library for his able help.]

The Jack and Mule King

A slightly abridged version of this article appeared in Bend of the River, March 2010. I couldn't figure out how to say "jackass" in a family publication.

The Jack and Mule King by Alan Borer

What is the name of a male donkey?

Now don’t drag mules into the picture. They are the infertile offspring of a donkey and a horse. But just as a lady horse is a mare, what are the gender names of donkeys?

The female donkey is called a jennet, and a male donkey is a jack. You often hear the word jack connected with a once-perfectly-correct name for a donkey. This combination of jack and another word is no longer acceptable in polite society, so I will leave it to the reader to figure out. Anyone over the age of 15 (?) probably knows the expression I will not mention here.

In 1912, a farmer living in Maple Grove, Ohio (about halfway between Fostoria and Fremont in northern Seneca County) wrote a letter to Albert Krekler in West Elkton, another small town, this one in Preble County west of Dayton. S. W. Hoke described himself in the 1910 Census as a “general farmer” and was 56 years old, about the same age as his wife Johanna. Although we don’t know why, the older couple had adopted a three year old boy named Clifford. Perhaps he was the son of a relative, or brought from an orphanage. Maybe he would become the beloved boy of a childless couple, or adopted to work on the farm. There were many motives for adoptions in the past.

But whether for farm work or as a present for the new family member, S. W. Hoke was interested in getting a donkey. Donkeys are very useful farm animals. They are less temperamental than horses, and while they cannot pull the same weight as a horse, they can pull a large load, are better on uneven ground, eat less, and (perhaps most importantly) cost less than a horse. The Albert Krekler to which Hoke wrote was a dealer in donkeys and mules, and thus was a good source for the prospective donkey customer.

Albert Krekler (1861-1952) was a native of Warren County. He was “engaged in the mercantile business” for many years, but in 1899 he got out of the business world and bought a thirty-two acre farm north of West Elkton, Ohio, in Preble County. As a farmer, he “specialized in the raising of jacks.” He “increased his land holdings until he now (1915) owns eighteen farms in Ohio and Indiana and has become the largest breeder of jacks in the world.”

Krekler named his Ohio operation “Krekler’s Good Luck Stock Farms.” He specialized in “Black Spanish” jacks and jennys, and also carried mules and saddle horses. Krekler was sometimes called “The Jack and Mule King.” His livestock holdings were once noted as “The Home of 500 Jacks and Jennys, 1000 Mules, Saddle Horses, and Shetland Ponies.” Even in the twilight of the horse-drawn age, he made a good living for himself in the donkey business. He had a “lovely country home,” and a private racetrack where guests and friends could watch races on Sunday afternoons. Mr. Kekler died in March of 1952. He was married twice, and left a number of descendants. Even today, some of his barns and outbuildings can be seen in the countryside around West Elkton.

It is not clear whether Mr. Krekler felt pinched as the world turned away from livestock for power and switched to gasoline. World War 2 also seems to have played a role. The American Donkey and Mule Society reported that, ““In 1910, the numbers of donkeys and mules were changing. During the earlier wars, mules were in HUGE demand for Army use. The numbers might have been in the millions - but no true records were kept. After WWII, with the advent of mechanization for both the Army and for farm work, numbers of longears dropped drastically.”

On return envelopes that Albert Krekler sent to enquiring farmers, there was a vignette of a donkey. The donkey apparently was offering this invitation: “Come and see me. I know you will like me and take me home with you and I will make you plenty of money.” That may have been the wish of Mr. Hoke in Maple Grove. Albert Krekler was only too happy to grant that wish.

[I wish to thank Jessica Curtis of the Westerville Public Library for her help with this essay. A descendant of Albert Krekler also provided insights.]

Mail From Haskins, 1883

This was an early article of mine in Bend of the River. I have a friend who spent part of his childhood in Haskins; maybe that's why I liked this essay.

Mail from Haskins, 1883 by Alan Borer

Some romance has been lost in the world of email. Emails seem to mostly consist of “Hi-How are you-I’m alright, how are you?” and go downhill from that inauspicious start. Of course, letters of the past often did not have said much more. But an old letter at least has the patina of venerability.

An old letter! A thing tangible, held in the hand. With a stamp and a postmark, possibly showing a faraway place, if only faraway in time. And of course, letters of the past sometimes do provide clues to a vanished way of life. I’m interested in the farming culture of a century ago. So when I saw the old letter dated Haskins I was tempted to look beyond the I-miss-you sentiments and see what it could tell me. And there are some nuggets of insight in the letter that I’ll try to share with you.

The Letter

The letter was addressed to Miss Nellie May Williams of Paines, Michigan. and written from Haskins, Ohio on September 30, 1883. The letter, which is signed “Mama,” appears to be a mother writing to her daughter, who is staying with relatives in Paines. The letter, four pages long and written in a mostly legible hand, is full of homesickness: how much Nellie is missed, when she will be home again, and so forth. Relatives are mentioned: Uncle Sauers, with whom Nellie was staying, Aunt Ethel, Aunt Addie, Nellie Feagler (a friend?).
Unfortunately, the family of Nellie Williams did not leave many tracks. The only Nellie Williams listed in the Census of 1880 in Haskins is a one year old girl. Census taker’s mistake or a different Nellie Williams? Or H. B. Sauers, her host in Michigan. Paines, Michigan was a logging and railway town just west of Saginaw. Many of the residents of Paines were listed as “rafters” (presumable logging raftsmen), but there was no Sauers among them. So Uncle Sauers must have arrived in Paines after 1880 and departed – when? The records of the Census of 1890 were destroyed in a fire; they might have told us, but we have lost the trail again.

So we are left without family details, but can recover some material about rural life in small-town Wood County. For example:

Chickens

“We have nine little white chickens. They were two weeks old yesterday. Mrs. Cobly [?] says that I will have to knit stockings for them. Tell Grand-Pa that that old hen chick could fly out of the coop. Stole her nest in the barn on the hay and laid fourteen eggs before we found her nest. She hatched every one of them. But we had a hard storm and I think they got chilled and five of them died. The rest are as lively as crickets.”

Farmers in the preindustrial world had a constant battle with their chickens over where the chickens built their nests. The farming family generally preferred a nesting box of some sort, where temperature, humidity, and the portions of feed could be controlled. The chickens’ nature is to take a chance of a more secluded spot, and as Mrs. Williams letter showed, will gladly build their own nest in a haystack or a quiet barn. These out-of-the-way nests would be found later. But as Mrs. Williams discovered, a cold snap or bad weather could cause great mortality among chicks living without human supervision. The idea of chicken stockings is a nice touch in the telling of a poultry tragedy. The Mrs Cobly (the name is a bit hard to make out) referred to here may have been Frances Cobly the wife of a Haskins grocer in the Census of 1880.

Picture of a Cat

“So the other day when I was at Bowling Green I bought her a picture of a cat and after I got here (hers?) thought I must get one for you or there would be trouble when you came to see her. Yours sets on your little blue table in the front room and it is so large & looks so natural that sometimes when I go in there I think it must be a live cat.”

Mrs. Williams apparently was trying to improve her home decorating with a picture of a cat. Cat-haters out there will admit that the best kind of cat would be a picture of a cat, while cat-lovers would merely go to the barn and looked for the farm cats prowling for mice, milk, or both. Mrs. Williams thought the picture very life-like, and her text conjures up a Victorian print of a lively cat.



The Fair

“I have wished so many times this week you were here to go the Fair with me. I think you would have had lots of fun playing and would have enjoyed the good things to eat.”

Within Mrs. Williams letter is another, short letter, also addressed to Nellie Williams, from someone signing the name “Aunt Addie.” Aunt Addie is no more retrievable from the records than Mr. Sauers. From the letter we might surmise that she was a sister of “Mama’s.” But here we are more interested in her reference to the Fair. Which fair?

The Wood County Fair in 1883 was hosted by the village of Tontogany, not too far from Haskins. The first Wood County fair was in Bowling Green in 1856, sponsored by the Wood County Agricultural Society. It then spent several decades hopping around the county, being hosted by Bowling Green, Tontogany, Portage, and Perrysburg. A “Wood County Fair” sponsored by an independent Fair Board located a Wood County Fair in Bowling Green, even while the Agricultural Fair continued elsewhere. Thus, for a few years, there were two fairs. There were also independent fairs held in Pemberville and Portage.

It is not clear to which fair Aunt Addie was referring. But the odds are that the Tontogany-based Wood County Fair was the one. The letter to Nellie is dated September 30, 1883. The Tontogany fair closed September 28, corresponding with Nellie’s letter. Likely any fair in 1883 was warm and dusty, which may explain the writer’s next sentence.

Ice Cream

“They had splendid ice cream and I know you like that.”


Aunt Addie saw ice cream at the fair, undoubtedly enjoyed in the time before home refrigeration. Americans were developing a taste for ice cream in the post-Civil War years. But in 1883, most ice cream was still made with a hand cranked freezer. The marketing of ice cream was a different matter. Commercial ice cream parlors began to spring up, and street vendors hawked what was called “hokey-pokey,” a slang word for ice cream that has since fallen out of use in the English language. Aunt Addie relates that she saw (or maybe ate) ice cream at the fair. If so it may have come from one of the new, commercial vendors.

Mother Goose

“One night the little boys and girls played Mother Goose and it was good.”

This one is a puzzle. I haven’t been able to find out anything about a game called “Mother Goose.” There was a popular board game in the nineteenth century called “The Game of the Goose,” in which children (and adult) players rolled dice and marched along numbered squares. Players collected “stakes” and advanced toward squares with a goose, all the while avoiding such squares as The Inn, The Maze, The Prison, and Death (!). Movement in this game was fast-paced, and winning (and losing) came about in minutes. The Game of the Goose originated in Europe. We don’t know for sure if this is the game referred to, but in light of other information, this is a good guess.

Haskins today is (I fear) going to become part of the greater Toledo suburban sprawl that has swallowed Perrysburg, Waterville, and threatens Grand Rapids, Whitehouse, and Berkey. But it is still possible to see the same countryside that the Williams family wrote about to Nellie Mae in faraway Michigan. And this forgotten letter helps reinforce the scene, however impermanent, to those who read.

Skating in Manhattan, Ohio - Winter, 1865

Skating in Manhattan, Winter, 1865 by Alan Borer

People who take an interest in history are habitual letter readers. The most sloppily composed letter can reveal tidbits of information to the careful researcher. It can be even more difficult when the letter is not complete. Even modern correspondence does not always contain the name (first and last) of the sender in full, nor the intended recipient. Especially daunting is a letter which no longer has the envelope in which it was mailed.

One story will illustrate this possible disconnection. I recently acquired a letter dated Toledo, December 5, 1865. It is addressed in a friendly way to “Dear Eliza,” and signed, “From your loving friend, Addie.” But the envelope, that would help me identify the full name of Eliza or Addie, was missing.

Rats.

Was there enough of the contents of this letter to figure out who and where? Maybe. We’ll try.

I will not reprint the whole letter here. Some of it is just girlish chitchat. Addie was apparently living in a boarding house or rented rooms somewhere in that wintry Toledo. She, like many letter-writers, complained about her health; she had rheumatism and is tired all the time. She was a schoolteacher. That can be inferred by her complaints about rambunctious students (she calls them scholars).

She complains about the cold weather: “It is very cold here. there has been good sleighing here for a week and it looks very much like a snow storm now, I presume it will snow all day.” Addie has actually begun painting a written picture of her world. Toledo was a boom town in the 1860s. The city population, only 13,768 in 1860 had jumped to 31,584 in 1870. We can estimate an 1865 population of about 22,000. Only the wealthy residents of the city could afford a home, or house, as we think of it in 2007. People lived in rooms, boarded with friends or with complete strangers. They walked where they needed to be; streetcars had not yet made their appearance, and automobiles were 40 years in the future. So we can get a sensate snapshot of Addie walking through a fast-falling snow, cold (“The doctor says I must wear flannel underclothes, that will seem rather strange for me.”), tired, but determined to make her students behave.

What students?

Now we must make some intuitive leaps. Let me begin by quoting some of the letter:

“I have been anticipating much pleasure in skating, this winter; Yesterday I borrowed a pair of skates and Addie Case (A friend of mine) and I went out on the river to skate, got along braveley, thought I was some, went out again at noon with my scholars, was rushing along on my skates like a locomotive in full speed when, lo; away ahead of me I saw something that looked very much like my watch with the crystal smashed in an indeffinite number of pieces, I thought I had gotten enough of skating for one day so I picked up the watch and mosied back to the school house, thought I would try it again to day.”

Read carefully, this paragraph raises some questions and provides some partial answers. For example, the writer gives the first and last name, Addie Case, of a friend who went skating on a frozen river. With a last name, we have some hope of tracking down the friend in the United States Census. There was an Adelade Case (daughter of Israel and Swayton Case) in the 1870 Census for Manhattan Township, Lucas County. She was 23 the day the census taker came to her house, July 8, 1870, making her age 18 when she skated with her friend, Addie the schoolteacher, in 1865. We cannot be sure this is the same Addie Case that skated with our letter-writer, but it seems likely given the next step in our case.

After skating with Addie Case, our teacher went out again to skate with “my scholars,” also presumably on a frozen river. If a teacher took her rowdy students skating, she would not have wanted to go very far. In another paragraph of the letter, she wrote: “My scholars are none of them very large. the oldest fourteen.” So presumably, Addie would have been teaching in a school building at or near a riverfront.


There were two schools named Manhattan in early Toledo. One was a Toledo city school, located about where the High Level Bridge is today, at the corner of Erie and Tecumseh. There was also a Manhattan Township School “near Manhattan Road (1875-76 Toledo City Directory).” That is not very specific, but an 1861 Atlas of Lucas County shows a school located within walking distance of the Ottawa River in what is now North Toledo.

Manhattan School, a block from the Maumee River, or Manhattan School, in walking distance from the Ottawa River? For skating with a class of high-spirited children, with a friend, Addie Case, a resident of Manhattan Township, the signs suggests that the skating party was on the Ottawa River. Can we say with surety that Teacher Addie taught at Manhattan Township School? No, but it’s a fairly good bet she did.

Manhattan?

The name “Manhattan” has a spotty, yet colorful history of lending itself to Toledo-area places. Even today, most Toledoans can name one easily: Manhattan Boulevard, a busy street in the Buckeye Basin. But there have also been a village called Manhattan (which existed from 1835 to 1848), the two Manhattan Schools (see above), Manhattan Township (swallowed by the city in 1874), and any number of businesses, past and present, which use the Manhattan name.

The township of Manhattan existed on both side of the Maumee. Until the 1860s, it was a mainly rural area, with the proto-village of Manhattan located on the north side of the Maumee. The Manhattan post office existed from 1836 to 1858, explaining why Addie’s letter was datelined Toledo, not Manhattan. The Stickneys and the Ketchams were large landowners; descendants of Peter Navarre owned land on the eastern side of the township. When the township land became valuable enough to become part of a growing Toledo, Toledo and Oregon divvied up the township on their respective sides of the river.

But to return to Addie the Schoolteacher: her letter is an interesting fragment of the history of the Manhattan area. Since we don’t know her last name, we can trace her neither forward nor backward in time. Where she was born and died, whether she taught all her life, married, raised children, or lived happily is beyond our knowledge. But that cold, snowy day, skating on (presumably) the Ottawa River, exists as keenly as a snapshot, and leaves a moment in her life more clearly than most of her contemporaries.