A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - F is for Farmer

 It would seem logical that most early arrivals to New England became farmers by necessity.  They had to have a way to feed themselves.  It wasn't any different for Samuel Packard, my 8x-great-grandfather.  He arrived with a wife and one child in 1638 at Hingham, Plymouth Colony.  Not long after, he removed his family to Weymouth, and finally settled in Bridgewater.  By the time of his death in 1684, he had acquired a goodly amount of land, much of it farmed.  

Much later, my great-great grandfather Nelson Reed McKee was listed in the 1860 census as being a farmer in Allen County, Indiana.  Either he did not succeed as a farmer, or he just found that he did not like the occupation, for in the 1870 census, he is listed as a silversmith.  At that time, he was living with his wife and two children in Portland, Jay County, Indiana.  

A several-times great-granduncle was a farmer in Maryland.  His name was Jean-Pierre LeSueur, and he had come over from France to fight on the side of the American colonies in our Revolution.  His descendant, my great-granduncle Levi Curtis LeSourd (the spelling varied over time) was also a farmer, in Indiana.  He and his family lived in a small town called Sleeth, in Carroll County. named for the family of Levi's wife Rachel Anna Sleeth.

Harold Blaine White was the third husband of my grandmother Ruth Nave.  Her first husband, Benjamin Franklin Reed, was my grandfather.  He died in a railroad accident in 1917.  Harold White was raised on a farm, and his first occupation was as a farmer.  From what I have learned of him, he was not a success as a farmer.  He apparently was not much of a success at much of anything, because he attributed to himself several occupations, but in each census in which he was listed, he is shown as unemployed.  His earnings for the year, as shown in censuses, were much less than that of my grandmother.

Farming did not survive as an occupation in my family into the 20th century.  

Throwback Thursday: Small Town Indiana, 1890s

My grandma Mary LeSourd Reed grew up in a small town called Sleeth, Indiana.  It had been named for the family of her mother, Rachel Anna Sleeth, who married Levi Curtis LeSourd in 1868.  Sleeth is not much more than a ghost town today, so I'm told.  It is in Carroll County, northwest of Delphi.  My grandma told me some tales about the area, including her mother's thrift one Sunday ride.  Rachel Anna Sleeth would go on buggy rides with her husband Levi.  They stopped one day at a roadside stand where the farmer was selling corn for 2 cents an ear.  These days, that would be an unheard-of opportunity.  But the ears of corn were snug in their shucks, so Rachel turned up her nose, saying, "Corns not shucked.  Drive on."  In my grandma's family down to my own life, that became a way of saying that something had not met your standards and you were going to keep searching until you found an example that did measure up. 

One feature of small-town life in the late 19th century, all the way up until the mid 20th century was the general store, whether it was located in an Indiana town or one in Georgia, like the general store in Darien, Georgia that my husband's step-grandfather owned.  The photo below is of the I. G. Wilson General Store, which may have been in Sleeth, but I don't remember what grandma told me about it.  I also don't know the meaning of "Lest We Forget" written in pen at the bottom of the photo.  Grandma told me that, among the children, I. G. was not well-liked, and the children would taunt him with, "I. G. Wilson.  Nut! Nut! Nut! Nut! Nut!"