194                     HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

the first public school in Perry township, in the year 1844, a term of
four months, for which she received $10 per month, was not only a
successful teacher, as said by survivors of that time, but the most
intelligent woman in the western central part of the county, in her day.
Her only daughter, Martha A. Jeffers, now the wife of F. M. Sigler, Hot
Springs, Arkansas, is remembered as one of the few efficient, successful
and progressive primary teachers in the schools of Clay county forty
years ago, who taught at Harmony, Brazil, Knightsville, and in the rural
district schools of Perry, Van Buren and Dick Johnson townships.
    Miss Mollie Conder, residing near Clay City, has an unparalleled
record in hotel service. At sixteen years of age she was employed by
the hotel at Worthington known as the “Williams House,” to assist
about the cooking and dining-room service and in course of time was
placed in charge of the culinary department of the hostelry, in which
position she continued uninterruptedly up to the spring of 1908, a period
of forty years in the same house, retiring at fifty-six years of age. Miss
Conder is the daughter of Adam Conder, who was recorder of Owen
county at the time of the Civil war, and later justice of the peace at
Clay City.
    Mrs. Lovina Duncan, wife of Ezra 0. Duncan, left in 1868, at the
age of fifty-one years, by the death of her husband, to care for her
orphan children, adopted various means for keeping the wolf at bay in
providing a livelihood for the family and preserving unencumbered the
title to the small farm on which the family had been domiciled by the
father. Some of her methods for the earning and husbanding of a cash
account for emergencies bordered closely upon the heroic. As an
example, she resorted to the wash-tub, an employment which necessitated
her going to the homes of her patrons to render the service. During
several seasons she did the washing regularly for two or more families
at the town of Middlebury, six long miles from her residence. This
distance she walked in the morning, then, after the day’s washing,
returned home in the evening on foot, making the round trip of practi-
cally thirteen miles on several different days of the week.
    Miss Bennie Hill, daughter of David A. Hill, Howesville, was for a
time a pension agent, reputed to have been expert in getting up the
evidence required by the department to establish the claims she repre-
sented. In the month of August, 1892, the Clay City Sentinel said:
“Her first claim presented was successful, notwithstanding several other
agents had given it up.” Miss Hill was also postmaster at Howesville.
    In the early part of the year 1908, the Terre Haute Tribune organ-
ized and conducted a contest for increasing its circulation. The territory
tributary to the “Prairie City” and covering the area of the Tribune’s
field and patronage was divided into three districts, from each of which
the successful, winning competitor was to he awarded a free trip to
Europe. Only women were eligible as competitors in the race. The
number of votes to which the respective aspirants were entitled was
gauged by the number and amount of cash subscriptions reported to their
credit. The territory comprised within the second district lay south of
the Vandalia Railroad, extending from Greencastle over into eastern
Illinois, covering, perhaps, two tiers of counties southward. Within this
district were as many as twenty-one contestants, among whom was Mrs.
Melissa D. James, of Cory, Clay county. When the contest closed, at
9 o’clock p. in, Thursday, May 28, Mrs. James’s credits aggregated