Brown County Democrat from Nashville, Indiana • Page 7

tmmatvat I Section II. Page 7 1 Breton Countg folks WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 1975 COMPLETELY SERVICES QUINCO CONSULTING CENTER MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION 088-2258 597-4900 Nm Him Building' We specialize in Frame and Finish Trim Sstufsetitn usrnmd Robert Schrock Construction R. R. 4, Box 212A Nashville, Indiana 47448 812.988-2137 show, and they stayed all night there." Harry also had two memorable overnight visits to Bloomington by buggy. One was when his dad took him to his first circus.

The other time was when he and Ray were treated by their dad to the boys first movie. "Dad combined business with pleasure, on that trip," Harry says. "The real reason for it' was to pick up a load of building materials in Bloomington, to finish Richard Kelley's new house. "Once I went to Indian-apolis with a neighbor, Henry Percifield, who was moving his daughter's furniture up there. I slept that night on the furniture in the wagon, parked in a vacant lot and almost froze.

Next day we found the house and delivered the furniture, but I had had enough I caught a train, for Helmsburg and left Henry to come home in the wagon alone. "Grandfather McLary helped build the first church in at the request of a traveling preacher named Henry Griffin. He was also the preacher who later married Ethel and me. When they put in the organ, the preacher dropped out. He didn't believe in having an organ in church.

"Preacher Griffin later talked grandfather into helping build a new church on Owl Creek at the fork of Helmsburg Rd. We all went to it pretty regular for a while. Ray and I were bap-i tized in Salt Creek, right above where the preacher lived. The church eventually was sold to my cousin, Opal Bridges, who had it dismantled and rebuilt near her old home place. I think it's still there.

"About all I remember of the first world war was a shortage of flour and sugar. All we had for news was the county weekly paper. When the armistice was signed, Ray and I went to Nashville for the celebration. "Dennis and Durad Calvin borrowed two anvils from a blacksmith shop, poured powder in the hole in one and laid the other anvil over it. ThpiV icmit.d t.liA nnicdpr I I October's trees have been flocked with snow.

The pumpkins gathered in long ago. Summer gardens are long forgotten; Snow covered ridges looking soft as cotton. Winter in Brown County VISIT Styles with Charm By Pat Valley Beauty Salon Salt Creek Valley Park 988-7335 Pat Carothers For a BETTER Usod Car (or the BEST new car) See McDONALD Chevrolet Sales Jackson Creek. When school was out, we moved to Old Unionville in Monroe coun-7 ty, where Russell was born in 1924. "I think I taught two more years after that, at Jackson Creek.

The last time, we lived in the Rogers house, where Yellowwood Lake is now. Then we moved to my Aunt Sarah Hoy's house near Nashville and both Alpha and I taught at Belmont. That was my last school. "After Betty was born in 1927 I went to work at the carpenter trade and followed it, off and on, ever since. I started by building a cabin up the Hobbs Branch on our old home place for H.

H. Brooks. I moved in and worked for Brooks, developing his property, for a couple of years. Dorothea Jean was born while we lived there, in 1929, and Charles William (Bill) in 1931. "My father died and my mother gave me a piece of ground south of her old home place and I bought five acres from Ray, right next to it, built a cabin and lived there until my children all finished high school, got married and left home.

"Then I moved to Bloomington and sold the cabin and land to my brother Dale. I built a new house for him on that land, and he still owns it and lives there. "I also built and helped build several buildings around Nashville. They in-elude the Griffith pottery, Adolph Shulz and V. J.

Car-iani studios, and the Christian church after the old one burned. I remodeled Marie Goth's studio and Will Vaw-ter's house that Bob Gregg lives in, and built an addition to Milton Matter's 'Mat-terhorn' on Greasy Creek. I also built the house where Ival McDonald lives, for a Dr. Culmer of Bloomington. "During WPA days I helped Fred Rains build the walks around the courthouse and the foundation for the old high school gymnasium.

I also helped build the roads in the state park. The last house I built in Brown County was for Merritt Harrison, near the north entrance to the-park. "In Bloomington I built several houses while working for Sare and Prince and then several on my own. Ethel retired from the audio-visual department at I.U. in 1971, after 22 years of service.

Our present address is 322 E. 16th street. "I don't do much now except watch my 11 grandchildren grow up, get married and begin their new lives. "My oldest, Russell, who married Juanita Percifield," has four boys, one a pharmacist. Russell has a good job with the State Board of Health in Indianapolis.

"Betty married Wayne Carmichael, vice-president of the Monroe County Bank. They have two girls and the older one is a teacher married to a teacher in Indianapolis. "Dorothea Jean married Lewis Johnson, purchasing agent for I.U. They live in Indianapolis and also have two girls. "Charles William, or Bill, as we call him, has worked 24 years for Cummins Engine Company and is run-' ning their operation down in Memphis.

Bill and his wife have two girls and a boy. "I'm proud that they're all doing well." Harry remembers a particularly proud occasion during his earlier years. That was when Harry and Ray were presented jointly with what he calls "our first necktie" by their Aunt Laura McGuire, who lived on a farm near Trevlac. "Ray and smiled Harry, "were sure proud have that tier jmml. SAVINGS Now cms.

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All the siblings except Sam were graduated from Brown County High School. The William Mathises made their home with the McLarys until they bought a farm from Sarah Hoy on what was called Hobbs Branch and later was known as Brooks Holler. While living there Harry and his brother Ray were promised by their dad that they could go barefoot, come Easter, and they eagerly awaited the day. Easter morning dawned, however, on an inch or more of snow. Harry had second thoughts but Ray doffed shoes for the summer, snow or no snow! Harry went to Green Valley school, where his first teachers were Joshua Bond and Elsie Calvin.

Eudora Kelley took him to school on his very first day. There were 35 or 40 boys and girls. Put in a seat with two bigger boys, Harry kept finding himself pushed off into the aisle. He was moved up front and sat during his first three or four years with a cousin, Myrtle Hoy. Harry remembers there was a good wagon road in those days from Green Valley to Kelp and to Stone Head.

Of course everybody walked to school. The William Mathises bought a farm on Salt Creek from a Dr. Cook in 1907. Sam was born there and' has lived in that house ever since, except for a few years following his marriage. Frank Harden and family had occupied 'it previously.

The Hardens moved into the place the Mathises left on Hobbs Branch. There was no road along the bluff to the Salt Creek farm house. It was reached by traveling the creek bed. Finally a road was built by Harry's dad and their neigh-. bors.

It took them several years. Harry remembers they got the materials from Opened January 6 By DICK REED Of The Democrat Staff Harry Mathis is a retired "75-year-old former teacher and construction worker who is the oldest of 11 brothers and sisters, all still living. His maternal grandparents, Samuel McLary and Mary Ann Branstetter McLary, owned a big farm on Green Valley Rd. where Harry's sister Laura and her husband, Claris Keaton, now live. The farm house was built by John Voland, with whose brother, Ed, Harry worked as a carpenter and builder for 22 years.

Harry has spent a large part of his life around that neighborhood. It was there that his mother (another Mary Ann McLary) was born, and there that his grandmother McLary died in 1880. Years later Samuel married again, to Margaret Archer. Harry's grandfather Jeremiah Mathis moved to the county in 1876 from Illinois when Harry's father was three years old. r.

But Jeremiah had evidently lived in the hiHso' Brown at an earlier date. entered the Union Army from 4 Nashville on Jan. 3, 1864, according to official records, and is sad to have taken part in Gen. Sherman's march to the sea. He married Elizabeth Reed of Brown County and their son, William Mathis, was Harry's father.

Jeremiah died in 1891. That was eight years before Harry was born, on March 18, 1899. Of the 11 children born to William and Mary Ann -McLary Mathis, Harry, Ray and Alpha (Sipes) now live in Bloomington; Richard in Iowa City, Eudora (Steinke) in Tuttle, S.D.; Olive (Steinke) in South Bend, Ind. Olive and Eudora married brothers; Mary Jane (Weisman) in. San Diego, Maurice, Sam and Dale all near Nashville, as well as Laura (Keaton) who occupies the old McLary home place on Hoosier Schoolmaster' and 'Keeping Up With Lizzie.

Other activities, especially in winter, were taffy pulling and making popcorn balls. Harry has a special feeling for teachers Mike Ferguson and Louie Snyder. He says Snyder taught him just about all the mathematics he ever, learned and Fergu son brought colored paper to school, where the pupils made the first valentines Harry ever sent or received. "When the 1913 flood came," Harry recalls, "it got into the school and ruined all the books. "In 1914, I started to Nashville High School.

There were no buses or hot lunches. One day Ray and I walked two miles to classes in deep snow and 27-below temperature only to find there was no school! We warmed up a little in town," he said, "and then walked back home. "The principals, when I went to high school, were Goble, Bartz and Grover Brown, who was in when I was graduated in 1918. "From Nashville High I went to Central Normal College in Danville to get a permit to teach. The course was 12 weeks, the tuition was $25, and I paid 50-cents a week for room rent and $2.50 a week for board.

The food was not the best, but we lived on it along with a lot of raisins and generally had a good time. "My roommate was Ray Henderson. The school threw a party on the last nighty and we were both paired off with girls we'd never seen before. After buying tickets to Indianapolis and then to Helmsburg, we had all of five cents left. So we spent the nickel on peanuts and started home flat broke.

"Travel was hard, back then. I remember the only 'long trip my father and mother ever went onlt was to Bloomington to see a the creek bed. He grew up on that farm and stayed there until he married Ethel Pogue in Bloomington on February 19, 1923. Harry remembers those early years as an almost continuous struggle to keep enough wood chopped a chore he shared with brother Ray. He seldom went to Nashville until he started high school.

One day, while Harry was walking to town, Dr. Ray Tilton came along in one of the first autos owned by a Brown Coun-tian, and offered him a ride. "I was scared of the thing," Harry admits. "I wouldn't get in just kept on walking." There were horses on the farm and he remembers riding themj a lot. He and his dad alsojrrade wagon trips to a mill owned by Ben Petro to get corn and wheat ground into meal and flour until the mill's boiler blew up, one morning, and "Mowed that man all over the hillside." McDonald's mill was in Nashville, across the street from where Earl Bond lives.

The Calvert mill was in -Trevlac, to which Mr. Calvert gave his name (spelled backward). And there was another null at Stone Head. An uncle of Harry's, Charles Taylor, made their sorghum at his mill on Owk. Creek.

As boys, 'Harry and Ray made a little spending money hoeing corn for neighbor and helping granddaddy McLary build fence and sheer his sheep. The lads got paid when the wool was sold. Later, Harry worked two summers for Emmons Clark for $20 a month and $26 a month the second year, getting home on weekends. He also remembers their father reading to them in the evenings. The books which made the biggest impression on Harry were The Morgantown Brown County Insurance Agency Homeowners, Auto, Fire, Theft, Livestock available Farm Loans Minimum 40 Acres Joe Ackerman Sales Representative a red-hot rod and the boom seemed to jar the whole earth.

"Another thing we did was ring the bells, on New Year's Eve. There were five bells in town, on the three churches, the schoolhouse and courthouse. We'd start -c ringing them all at once, at midnite, and ring them for an hour. "Older boys told us they used to ring those bells until daylight. "In the fall of 1918 I got my first teaching job at Huber fpr $85 per month.

That included building the fires and "doing the janitor work. Just before the term ended, the school burned down from some unknown cause. "I went back to Central Normal that summer, and to Belmont to teach in the fall. I had the four upper grades and OHve White the other four. The next year I taught at Jackson Creek.

It was there I met Ethel, daughter of Charles and Rosa Pogue, who lived near the school. I had a car by then and we'd go to the show in Bloomington, with her sister, Lila. "Ray and Alpha were ready to teach by then, and there weren't enough schools to go around. I was elected attendance officer for Brown County and held that job until Ethel and I were married in February of 23. "We started housekeeping in her parents' home at Bloomington, where they'd moved from Jackson Creek.

I worked on the Charles Townsend farm, where Ethel's dad worked, too. Then I taught again back at Bank Americard Matter Charge Shop Infanta to abe 10 Kobe and Sweaters up to 14 OPEN ALL WINTER January Hours 10 a.m. 8 Ooaed Sunday MRS. Street, Morgantown. Indiana 597-5321 E.

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