Melrose (Clark Co, IL) Long Ago


Wednesday, 8 July 1936
 

 
It was with mingled feelings of pleasure and sadness that we attended
the homecoming at Melrose, Sunday.  We were glad to meet all there
are left of the people who lived there seventy years ago of which
there are not very many. There were but three people there that were
schoolmates of mine at the old Liberty school house.  
 
My first school years were spent in the old log school house that
stood across the road south and east of the present building.  Some
of my earliest teachers were Sarah Bartlett, Perry McCann, F. M.
Buckner, A. F. Gard and Phil Lee and a Mr. Kittle, of whom only Miss
Bartlett is living.  As nearly as I could learn, there is but one
family living on the land along the road from West Union to Melrose
that was owned by their ancestors when I first knew the country and
he is Robert McCourt, grandson of Morton Wilson.  I can remember
Uncle Jimmy Bartlett, the grandfather of Sarah Bartlett and she is
eighty-eight.  
 
Among the older people I knew were Nixon Evans, Robert Bailiff, Sr.,
Pliny Draper, Manuel Dodd, Joseph Wells, Alph Cowden, A. F. Gard,
Warren Bartlett, Wm. and Robert Miller, Jacob Scott, Sr., Isaiah
Janney, Wm. Pyle, Jame and Thos. Thompson, George Wilson, Malinda
Bartlett, Robert McCann, Asa Combs, my grandparents, Daniel Hull and
wife, Wesley Holaday, John Morton, David Cooper, Sr., Henry Auker,
Jesse Stanfield, Joseph Hedges, Wm. Hasting, Cameron Howerton, J. R.
and Wm. Cornwell, Solomon Brown, Petro Crumrin, Wesley Potter, David
Filoon, J. B. Shealey, Peter and Jonathon Medsker, Jesse Davis,
Daniel and Sidney Wells, Chas. Meeker, Joseph Fix, Thos. and James
Gard, Richard Alexander, Samuel White and a few whose given names I
cannot recall.
 
While recalling these old people and their mode of life and comparing
it with the present, it is not strange that we have a depression and
bankruptcies.  People in those days lived within their income and I
think got more real pleasure out of their simple and inexpensive
outings than do people of today.
 
If this article escaped the editor's waste basket, I would be glad to
hear through the paper from others along this line. --W. W. Handy,
Oliver, Ill., July 8, 1936.

Submitted by;
Cindy McCachern