Jackson County IL Archives News.....UNCLE FRED STRIGER HEARD GREELY'S CRY 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, 11:11 pm

Murphysboro Daily Independent October 16, 1923


    Uncle Fred STRIGER of DeSoto lived just north of Murphysboro on Beaucoup
when the Independent first saw light fifty years ago and his father was a
subscriber.

    He was born Nov. 16, 1843, at Kenton, Ky., and came to Jackson county with
his parents in 1858.  In 1874 he married Miss Mary E. REESE, daughter of a
neighboring family, and they passed through the vicissitudes of life together
and are still happily married.  In 1881 he felt the lure of the cry of Horace
Greeley when he said "Go west, young man, go west" and in a covered wagon left
his Beaucoup farm and traveled to Fort Scott, Kan.  The panic year of 1873 and
the cycle that followed made the young men with families go west in great
numbers, but success not always followed and the prairie schooners that headed
west with the slogan to "Kansas or bust" came back with "Kansas and Busted" on
the other side of the cover.  While Mr. Strigler was not busted he was glad
enough to come back to good old Jackson county and has found it good ever since.
 He remembers very vividly of attending Jackson county's first county fair.  It
was held shortly after the Striger family came from Kentucky, where they had
been regular attendants at the local county fair and expected to find as
flourishing institution here.  What was the surprise of the young Mr. Striger,
however, when he came to the fair to find that it was only occupying about an
acre of ground where the Jim SILL home now stands and that the race track was a
short lane where the horses that had drawn the two wheel carts or been ridden
were entered.  He tells of how Scott ATKINS won a race by using a blacksmith
whip on his own horse, at the same time whipping principally behind the horse to
keep the horse just behind him from coming any closer.  George WILL won the
prize for draft horses by getting on his horse to hold him to the ground while
he pulled the sled that was loaded with rock for the purpose of the test of the
horse's strength.  He there saw his first four wheeled farm wagon, which was
brightly striped with paint for show.

    Tiring of the fair, he came up town and ate a lunch in a small frame
building where the SMITH BOOTERY is located at the corner of Eleventh and Walnut
streets.  That now famous thoroughfare was covered with dog fennel and only a
path showed where the street was located.

    Mr. & Mrs. Striger have the following children living:  Mrs. Bert R. BURR,
Springfield, Ill., Mrs. Rose A. SCOTT, Billings, Mont., Stella A. KELLEY, East
St. Louis, Mrs. Ashby SNIDER, Christopher.


Additional Comments:

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

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/il/jackson/newspapers/unclefre103nnw.txt

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

File size: 3.3 Kb