Jackson County IL Archives News.....HARDY CREWS WRITES OF LONG AGO October 16, 1923
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/il/ilfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Mary Riseling riseling@insightbb.com July 13, 2006, 3:06 pm

Murphysboro Daily Independent October 16, 1923

DeSoto, Ill
Oct. 11, 1923

Editor Independent:

    In regard to recollections of the Independent and some incidents in Jackson
county 40 or 50 years ago.  I remember well about 48 year ago when the school
house known as the Crews school was built 10 miles north of Murphysboro and
three miles north of where the old Mannings Prairie school stood.  We had as our
second teacher a Miss Loniza HAYS from Carbondale.  I remember how common it was
for her when she came in home to my father's where she boarded.  When it was
paper day the first thing generally when she took her wraps off was to ask for
the Independent.  In regard to the idea expressed by the Cairo paper that the
first bale of cotton ginned this fall at Cairo was supposed to be the first bale
of cotton ginned in Illinois, I wish to state that along about 1870 and after
Samuel SCHWARTZ ran a cotton gin at Elkville, where cotton grown by many farmers
was ginned, I wish here to relate a story of an occurrence in connection with
selling cotton at this gin:

    Two men who are neither one living now were going to Elkville on a sideboard
load of cotton tramped in the wagon.  One of these men, a young man 20 or 21
years old, told the owner of the cotton that if he would buy him a half pint of
whiskey he would bury himself in the cotton and let him weigh him with the load
of cotton.  The proposition was accepted.  A hole was made down in the cotton
just before they got to Elkville.  The young man got down in the hole and was
covered up and the load was weighed.  Then as the cotton gin was a quarter of a
mile from the scales, Mr. Schwartz remarked that he would get on and ride.  So
he got on the load and sat down right over where the young man was lying.  This
created a great necessity of some change being made, so the farmer said to Mr.
Schwartz that he needed to stop in at the store and would drive around and hitch
in the shade awhile.  So Mr. Schwartz got off of the wagon, the farmer drove
around out of sight and opened up the cotton and let the young man out in
greater need of fresh air than whiskey.  The cotton was unloaded at the gin and
the farmer fulfilled his part of the contract by buying the whiskey and they
returned home.


Additional Comments:
Transcribed by Mary Riseling from grandfather C. E. RISELING's collection of old
newspapers.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/il/jackson/newspapers/hardycre8gnw.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/ilfiles/

File size: 2.9 Kb