1916
Justify fixes
Added Fred Brian
101
Repaired Fonts
Deleted duplicate page 36
Eliza Jane Westall, Sarah's mother is Laird
102
Added Warren Smith note
Added photo of Pleasant hill church
Added last paragraph John Cunningham
Added Charles N French 1915 note
Removed F M Shick Letter moved to 1915 note
103
Added Emma Ruark Rawlings Letter
104 Fred Brians Letter
S. W. BairdCharles E. Baker
Charles N. Barekman
A. J. Berlin
Mrs. Essie Bodine
Edna Carlisle
Mr. and Mrs. H. F. Combs
Glenn Corrie
Grace Daily Cunningham
John Cunningham
W. B. Elder
J. M. Freese
Charles N. French
Ida French
Ezekiel Gowin
Mrs. Frank Gray
Lee Haynes
John E. Heath
W. S. Hill
C. W. Ivie
Phoebe I. Ivie
Clem C. Jensen
Cleora Westall Jervis
Kate Keplinger
H. C. Kirk
Lou Mayo
Mrs. Charles McNece
R. E. Milligan
Elmer W. Neighbor
Mrs. Morris Parks
F. M. Perkins / O. E. Perkins
J. W. Peters
Hester L. Phillips
C. M. Piper
Joseph H. Piper
William W. Provines
Emma Rawlings
J. B. Reynolds
Roderick
J. F. Rosborough
L B Rosborough
George H Shafer
Emery E. Shaw
Abner Shick
D. L. Shick
F. M. Shick
H. H. Shoup
Theodore Siebert
Mrs. Stella Westall Smith
Mr. and Mrs. W. I. Smith
Mrs. Clem Starkman
Mr. and Mrs. Stroshine
H. C. Turner
Elmer E. Wagner
H. M. Wagner
Edna Webb
Cliff M. Wilson
Dora Wilson
Nora Woodall.
Alfa Worstell
Guthrie, Oklahoma
January 15, 1916
Editor Press:
It has been more than 45 years since I left old Lawrence County. My father moved to Bridgeport in 1858. However he had lived in Lawrence County 20 years before, near where old Mt. Zion now stands. In that neighborhood he married my mother Jane Turner. He taught one term of school at a place called Spring Hill, not far from where old Shiloh now stands. He taught school through the week and preached and reasoned with the people, who assembled at the school house, on Sundays. He moved out of that neighborhood, but for several years he visited and preached at that point occasionally.
Then he went to another state for a number of years and returned on a visit in 1858 and held a very successful meeting in an old schoolhouse there were Mt. Zion now stands and also at the White House. Those two churches then prevailed on him to come back to old Lawrence County. With the aid of good citizens of the community they built a home in Bridgeport, where he lived for about 10 years.
The Christian church at Bridgeport was first started under his care. For some time, however, the organization at the White House included the Bridgeport folks, and they held their meetings alternately at the White House and at Bridgeport in an upper room over a business house. But as soon as the meeting house was erected they met there. I remember my father held a meeting in the house before there was any floor in the building. The piles of lumber lying on the ground served the congregation for seats. This was just before the Civil War, when people were crazy on politics. Even church members were not always sane.
In 1869 I purchased some land on Oblong Prairie in Crawford County, and in 1871 I married Mary Fyffe, whose parents, Wilson and Lucy Fyffe lived on the state road near the White House.
In my letter last year your printer made me say I was married in 1877, probably mistaking one of my ones for a seven. Also you made me say that we had here now 100 acres of land when I wrote 160. But the worst wreck of your devil played on me was leaving out the words ”son o", in describing that boyish trip to the Lawrenceville depot, I said I asked William Lanterman, son of the proprietor to go with me, (a boy about my own age) but the printer makes me say that I made that trip with a dignified proprietor of the town. Now I know this must have dealt a staggering blow to my reputation for truth and veracity with my old friends, whom I remember something of those times. So now I demand satisfaction or you must suffer the consequences. I am peaceable.
S. W. Baird
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Danville, Indiana
January 26, 1916
The Sumner Press:
While I never made my home and Lawrence County, we always call Sumner our home town. I was born and raised in Crawford County, Southwest Township, and Landes having been our post office.
I left there in the spring of 1906 and came to Hendricks County, Indiana and located in Danville, the County seat which is 20 miles west of Indianapolis, and engaged in the medicine business. / (Silas Webster Baird)
Biographical Note:
Silas was born September 30, 1841 Andrew and Jane (nee Turner) Baird. On February 27, 1872 he married Mary Adaline Fyffe (born Feb. 1853) daughter of John and Lucy (nee Lathrop) Fyffe, in Lawrence county. The following children were listed n the census files: children: Eliza, Andrew, Calvin, Charles, Ira. Kate, Henry, Everette. Mary passed away December 1, 1932 and Silas on October 23, 1934.
Editors Note:
Mr. Baird’s 1915 letter wan not readable due to the condition of the newspaper however In 1917 he wrote: ” It is a pleasure and delight to read in the Pink Press letters from old friends, neighbors and relatives, who like ourselves have wandered away from the scenes of our childhood. Few of the writers will realize the satisfaction they give their old friends by telling the simple story of their present conditions and future prospects and of their children who have made this world brighter”
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(Charles E. Baker)Biographical Note:
Charles Baker was the son of John Northrop and Alice (nee Wurtzbaugh) Baker. Born December 17, 1879 and passed away on September 29, 1962. He was married to Shirley Rodrick May 2, 1908 and Shirley died on May 30, 1967. Charles is the grand son of MahaliaWurtzbaugh who wrote the Pink Press in 1915.
The 1930 Census lists Charles and Shirley having three children: Pansy, Charles and Helen.
------(Charles N. Barekman)
Biographical Note:
Charles N. Barekman was Bornin Lawrence County on January 11, 1875. He was united in Marriage to Ella Fitch Broughton. Ella was born February 19, 1886. To this union the following children were born: John W. (b. abt. 1908); Inez (b. abt. 1909). Ella died November 15, 1970 and Charles died June 12, 1974.They were laid to rest in the Acacia Memorial Park, Modesto, Stanislaus County, California.
------/ In the spring of 1908 I was married to Shirley Rodrickdaughter of Rev. Samuel Rodrick. We have a daughter six years old and a son four. We own our little home and are getting along nicely. I have been here now 10 years and am still in the medicine business.
Yours truly,
Charles E. Baker
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Flagstaff, Arizona
January 28, 1916
Greetings to all my friends in Lawrence County:
I was born in Lukin Township 41 years ago. My father Isaac N. Barekman, died when I was four years old. Three years later my mother died, leaving my sister, Ella, my brother Isaac, and myself, neither of whom were old enough to shift for ourselves.
Fortune favored me. I fell into the hands of the best man in Lawrence County, J. A. Barekman. He and his good wife reared me as their own and the kind treatment they extended me and the sacrifices they made for me shall never be forgotten.
After completing the eight years work at White Oak, attended the Sumner public schools, the Union Christian College at Merom Indiana and the Southern State Normal at Carbondale Illinois.
After teaching four years in Lawrence County, I was seized with a roving disposition, which is never forsaken me.
Leaving Sumner in the early spring of 1868, I travel my way of St. Paul, Minnesota, Victoria, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington, to San Francisco, California. There I enlisted for five years in the US Marine Corps in sailed for the Philippine Islands. I spent a very pleasant week in Honolulu, Hawaii while the ship was undergoing repairs.
After three years of active service against Filipinos, I return to Boston, Massachusetts, stopping en route to Nagasaki, Japan, San Francisco, Washington D. C. and New York City.
After seven months service as guard a at the U.S. Naval Prison at Charleston, Massachusetts and a few months service at Washington D.C. I was honorably discharged from the US military service and entered the railway service.
Visited the exposition at St. Louis secured a job as motorman and held it seven months, when I resigned to accept the position with the East St. Louis Suburban Company. After six years of service with that company during which time I made a couple of trips to Colorado and one to the exposition in Seattle. I resigned to take my wife west for her health.
My wife was formerly Miss Ella Broughton of O'Fallon, Illinois. It was in 1911 that we immigrated to Mexico. After spending one year at Los Lunas, New Mexico, where we lost all we had in an irrigation venture we came to Flagstaff, Arizona, and entered 160 acres of government land.
In the spring of 1914, we went back to Illinois and took up our residence at Granite City, where I was employed as conductor for the Illinois Traction System.
In April 1915, we again came to Arizona, raised a good crop on our Homestead, received a patent for our land and moved to Flagstaff, where our children have the advantage of the most excellent schools which they have here.
We have two children, Inez who is seven years old in the second grade and John Willis eight years old who is in the fourth grade. Flagstaff is a thriving up to date little city, among the scenic pines and snow-clad mountains, and ideal climate for lung diseases and the center of many interesting scenic and prehistoric places, including San Francisco Peaks, the amount of perpetual snow; Sunset Mountains and Lava beds; the painted Desert; Bottomless pit; Ancient cave dwellings and Cliff dwellings; and petrified forests etc.
It is also the county seat of Coconico County, the seat of the northern Arizona State Normal School and the great trading post of the Navajo Indians.
There are thousands of acres of government prairie land within a radius of 20 miles of Flagstaff yet open for homesteading. This land is surrounded by National Forest, fuel and fencing are free and plentiful.
While we have not accumulated much of this world goods owing to our roving dispossession and severe sickness which has overtaken us in the past that we are now healthy and happy, free and content, and permanently settled until the spirit moves us again.
Most respectfully,
Charles N. Barekman
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/ Biographical Note:
(A. J. Berlin)
Biographical Note:
Andrew Jackson Berlin was born in Lawrence county to Andrew and Hannah (nee Landis) Berlin. He was united in marriage on January 16, 1890 to Mary F. “Minnie” French, daughter of David and Emma (nee Stevens) French. Mary was born in January 1871. The four children referred to in the letter are: Nora F. (b. Apr. 1891); Ruth H. (b. Apr. 1896); Marie (b. abt. 1902); Vernon (b. abt. 1906), a son Everett A. (b. Feb. 1899) is listed in the 1900 census and presumably may have died.
Not Done
In 1920 he worked in an brick factory.
A. J. “Ozark Jack” Berlin / Veedersburg, Indiana
January 15, 1916
Editor Press:
It is with much pleasure I have the privilege of writing to the good old Sumner Press and my dear old schoolmates and friends of good old Richland and Lawrence counties. My home place was about six miles southwest of Sumner, about two miles east and a quarter miles south of the Mt. Olive Church and three quarters of a mile east and north of Mulberry school house, the only school I ever went to in my life, and there remain some of the dearest friends that I could hope to meet any place.
In the spring of 1884 my father sold the old home place to George Haynes. Now I think his son Bud owns the place. At this old home we used to have some of the grandest times each autumn. My father ran a cane mill and it was a busy time for us boys and most every week during the sorghum making the young people of our good neighborhood would gather in and have a taffy pulling and play party and we played the usual old games such as weavely wheat and skip to my lou and wading the cedar swamps and so forth.
When my father sold his farm in the spring of 1884 he left dear old Richland and moved to Ford County, Illinois. I being about 17 years old and rather a husky lad, my father picked on me to take a team through to Ford County, a distance of about 200 miles. It was in the month of February. I remember too well the day I started, the snow was falling thick and fast and I had a team of horses and a team of small wild mules, and the last ones I told goodbye was my good old aunt, Mrs. Mitchell Berlin, who lived quarter of a mile of our old home place, after bidding her and the children and cousins goodbye. I put spur on the horses and started on my journey. The weather turned out fearful cold and the snow was deep. My trip was anything but pleasant. The rest of the folks came by railroad.
We farmed in old Ford County for two years, my brother David, being general manager of the farm, and we did real well during the two years. The winter of 1885 we had an awful cold winter. One cold winter day my brother David and myself each took a load of corn and started to market with it at Melvin and after we sold the grain it was late in the afternoon and the thermometer was registering 20 degrees below zero. On our way home we had a stretch of raw Prairie to cross which covered with sloughs, ranging from one foot to six feet in the depth and as they were frozen over and covered with snow it was hard to determine where they were. Night had come on and we were making our way home when I was driving ahead with a great surprise I heard an awful crash and down went my team and the front wheels of the wagon and we soon discovered I had driven on a slough about four feet in depth and my good brother and I jumped down into the water unhitched the team and took the neck yoke and double trees and broke the ice until he made a road to the edge of the slough where the horses could plunge out. We then pried the front part of the wagon out and had about two miles to the nearest house. We were all but frozen to death when we reached fire.
My father sold his farming machinery and stock and went to Bellflower, Illinois and bought a nice little home in town. This was the last earthly home he ever owned and he and my good mother both passed away there and they rest in sleep in the cemetery about one mile north of Bellflower, Illinois, in McLean County. My parents were good Christian people and belong to the M.E. Church up to their death; my mother's maiden name was Hannah Landis. Was closely related to the Landis in and about Sumner and the Brians.
Now I will give you a little more of my biography. After my father and mother passed away as children we were left to shift for ourselves and in the summer of 1887 I hired to Adam Forepough’s Big circus. It was a largest American circus at that time there I had the pleasure of meeting old Sitting Bull, the notorious Indian chief and we put on a wild west performance with each show and played the Custer massacre. I stayed with the circus till the snow began to fall and then they went back to Philadelphia to their winter headquarters and I stopped off in the west.
Being fond of gun and saddle I worked for a few ranchers and then dropped back to the Ozark Mountains where I was an out and out hunter for a long time. While hunting here in the mountains I always got my part of the game. When I was only a lad down in the dear old Richland I used to go coon and possum hunting with the older hunters and we would meet in the evening to make our plans and they said that we would go in cahoots and that they knew the best market for furs and they would sell them and give me my part of the money. I don't know if they have found the market yet up to this date I received nothing but the cahoots. A few years ago I was in the vicinity of Sumner and was talking to one of my cousins and she laughed and asked me if I remember the time I ate my mother’s sugar, and I told her I had forgotten it. I didn't want to get her to get the joke on me I say I hadn’t forgotten it for my mother took me out in the back room and use the elastic part of her slipper on me.
I wish to say to my old chums that I never go back on my friends so I won't say anything about us playing wild animals and chicken roosts and so forth. No I won't mention it.
Well we have grown up to be men now. I am living in Veedersburg, Indiana. I have four children three girls and one boy, who is the baby and he is ten years old. My children are getting along good in their schooling and music. I employed with the New York Central Railroad as bridge carpenter. I work between Peoria Illinois and Indianapolis Indiana at home every Sunday.
No one loves their old schoolmates better than I, and dear friends, my wishes are tonight, that we may all so live that when we are called to the great beyond we can honestly and earnestly say: Over the river, the peaceful river, the Angels of death shall carry me to that land far away mid the stars, we are told where we know not the sorrows of time.