Country Living in Monroe
County, Ohio in the early 1900s
As
a boy reared in rural central Ohio in the 1940s I loved to explore, fish, swim,
and visit my grandparents. The latter
was a special treat that occurred annually because of the distance from our
home to where my grandparents lived in Monroe County, Ohio. My first mental pictures of Monroe County
were formed from those early visits.
One
of my fondest memories comes from a long solo, exploratory, hike that I took
along one of the many creeks that flow in the hollows between ancient hills
that push the skyline high into the air.
The sun had dipped below that skyline by the time I found my way back to
familiar territory. With still plenty
of light, I left the creek to take a shortcut across a flat field of perhaps 5
acres that likely had been the bed of some ancient lake. To my surprise I came across a section of an
old log house. All the walls were gone except
a single partial wall made of huge square logs that sloped from the remains of
a stone fireplace to the ground where once side-walls had stood. I was standing what had been the inside of
the house. My surprise gave way to
fascination for a gray-stripped lizard that watched me from his perch on one of
the logs. This ruin was now the home of
a lizard.
While
the sights of that afternoon froze in my memory, undoubtedly helped by the
experience of seeing the lizard, it was not until many years later that I
realized I had come upon a scene from a long past era. When I described my discovery to my
grandfather that evening he responded with, “Yes, that was the old home
place.” That was the first time my
attention was focused on the existence of a past in which people did not live
as we do today.
As
I reminisce about that snapshot in time I can now piece together other
information, stories, pictures, and facts from then and from decades preceding
and subsequent – knowledge gleaned from my genealogical research. My mother had been born in that house, as
had her father and her grandmother. The
80-acre farm had been purchased by my 3rd great grandfather in 1853,
inherited by his son and kept in the family for the succeeding decades.
Monroe
County, Ohio has existed as a geo-political area for a little over 200
years. A hike through the County around
1800 would have been a hike through a large hilly forest with no houses or
barns or other trappings of people except for an occasional trail that would
have been originally made by animals and a few Indians who passed through the
area. Within the next few decades, log
houses of the kind I discovered in the 1940s would begin to appear. The trails would be improve as a few men
with their horses would occasionally use them.
“Improvements”
would continue with the construction of roads, homes, barns and granaries as
the population grew until it finally arrived at the point of the “modern” homes
and roads of the 21st century.
Modern plastic-covered, air-conditioned houses filled with appliances
and all sorts of electrically powered devices for communication and
entertainment now dominate the landscape.
While
change is inevitable, it leaves in its path an eclectic assortment of the
past. Memories and pictures made at
various points along the 200-plus year time-line freezes the respective eras in
their time. Nostalgia drags those that
remember those scenes of not too long ago to a longing for the good-old-days. Although we can not turn back the hands of
time, one of the things that we can do is collect, assemble, and try to present
tidbits of history that both help to quench nostalgia and communicate to those
who do not have such memories.
Monroe
County in the period before and after 1900 was primarily an agricultural
community. That was the period of
wood-framed farmhouses, large wooden barns and drive-through granaries. The conveniences of the day were great
improvements over the hand-tools and muscle-powered equipment of the first
settlers. Yet those conveniences are
now items of history and curiosity.
In
the pages that follow an effort has been made to bring you pictures and
information about some of the 1900 era history of Monroe County. We are indebted to Dorothy and Glenn Bayes
for sharing their many photos that makes this odyssey into the past possible.
This
picture trip begins in the late 19th century with the building of
the some of the farm buildings. It
continues through much of the 20th century with several of the
pictures being taken in the early 21st century.
The setting – View of a typical Monroe County Farm
Thrashing – washing for dinner
Maps of Lee Township, Monroe Co., OH
Provided by Monroe County Historical
Society