| Gene Rees was part of a
transition generation, once riding in a canal
boat, but later a member of the Farm Bureau engaged in building a modern grain marketing
and hauling system. He once farmed with horses and ran a threshing rig, but later served on a
production credit board helping farmers adopt modern machinery such as tractors. On Sept.
12, 1983, Society member Lew Diehl interviewed Gene and Zada Rees in their retirement home
in Bellefontaine. The late Mr. Rees was a longtime Shelby County farmer and leader in farm
organizations. In this taped interview, the 89-year old Mr. Rees, born Oct. 11, 1894, in
Washington township, gives a special view of the Lockington area at the turn of the
century.
How far back you can remember?
About as far as I can go back is
when I went to school at Lockington. I was six years old, in the first grade. My teacher,
Minnie Flinn, was a wonderful teacher. I went to school there one year. I used to ride to
Lockington, I expect a dozen or fifteen times, on an old canal boat owned by Mr. Joe
Avery. We lived down on the side of the bank. I'd know he was parked up there in the old
Weis (Wise?) Pond. They put up there at night. I knew he was going down, so I'd make it my
business to be up there on the towpath. |
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He'd
see me, and he'd motion for me, and snub the boat over to the bank, and reach down and
take me by the hand and pull me up on the boat, and let me ride along to school. We were
at the old Althoff celery farm. That's about a mile and a half northeast from Lockington,
on the Miami River. [I went to the] same school that they [recently] tore down. The school I went to was just west of that big brick
[school]house. They had a little frame building they used for first grade.
What did Lockington
look like then?
Lockington had five locks
there, it was the highest point on the Miami-Erie Canal. They had a big elevator there. I
never dreamt, when I was a boy going to school there, that I'd work for the elevator one
time. And I did. I worked for Mr. Adler. He owned the elevator. And when I was real young
I saw them load grain at this big elevator, that's gone now, and ship it to Cincinnati in
a big canal boat.
And the way they done that [was] they had a big elevator. They ran it with
water power. They'd take this grain up about 50 feet high, and it would go down a trough
and scatter in the canal boat. That's the way they put it on. That was right in
Lockington. Now it's all level down there. You couldn't tell there was ever anything
there. And down below Lockington, if you wonder how the canal got across the Loramie
River, there was a box there, an aqueduct,
and that was full of water. The big flood affected that some too and broke it, but they
got it fixed. |
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At Landman's
Mill they had a feeder, a millrace. It went through a big water wheel. It was a big tall
thing. That's where they got the power to grind the flour, and grind the feed. My
grandfather, I used to go with him, he'd take corn down there to the Landman Mill. They
had a big stone grist mill there, and that was run with water power. It had the big wheel
outside, and the shaft went into the mill. They put belts on it, and that's the way they
ran it. After I grew up, I worked for the elevator, and we had to take our grain to Piqua,
and put it on a train. They didn't ship it on the canal any more.
Lockington was a busy place. Two blacksmith shops, about three groceries,
and seven saloons. They had a lumber mill there, and two churches, and the brick school
and the primary school. They had electricity that was brought down on the old Western Ohio
Railroad, when that first went in. They furnished the electricity for Lockington. I was
about 25 years old when they were selling to Johnny Adler. We ran the elevator on
electricity then. He turned it all over from water power to electric.
Did they use steam
at the sawmills back then, or was it water?
In earlier years, it was water power. Then, they changed to steam. That
was a great experience for me. |