Glimpsing the Past In Pine Village, Indiana
January/February 1998
Dr. Robert T. Rhode
4745 Glenway Avenue Cincinnati, Ohio 45238-4537
RELATED CONTENT
In my great-great-grandfather's barn northwest of Pine
Village, Indiana, in the 1860s and 1870s, oxen trod in a circle to
thresh wheat with their hooves. (This barn was built in the 1850s
and is still standing.) Within two generations, harvesting,
threshing, and separating the grain became mechanized and required
concerted interaction among rural people. By the 1920s, a person
standing on the level ground to either side of Pine Creek could see
columns of smoke rising from steam engines and could hear the
morning whistles calling to crews of farmers, 'We have steam up
and are ready to thresh!' During the first two decades of the
new century in Pine Village, then a town of two-hundred residents,
cooperation flourished in a variety of forms, from the harmonies of
the mandolin orchestra and concert band to the teamwork of the
town's football club. Of all such collaborative endeavors in
and around this rural hamlet, steam-powered threshing united the
highest numbers of citizens in carefully synchronized
activities.
From 1899 to 1919, Pine Village fielded a football team which
was undefeated for twelve years and professional from 1915 to 1919.
Over two thousand spectators would convene to witness the clash of
mighty opponents a large crowd in a sparsely-populated region. The
management hired the legendary Jim Thorpe to star in an exhibition
match. My great-uncle Charles Rhode played fullback and
occasionally center, and my cousin Claire Rhode both played on the
team and sponsored it financially.
Around 1910, Samuel C. Fenton, a talented musician who had
learned his craft through performing with various ensembles in his
hometown of Pine Village, played first trumpet in Arthur
Pryor's band, considered second only to John Philip Sousa's
band. Pryor had been Sousa's top trumpeter before he organized
his own ensemble. The half dozen of the best concert bands toured
the country entertaining crowds in cities small and large from the
turn of the century until the early 1930s. Such bands were
emblematic of the harmony of yesteryear.
'Cooperation' was the byword of rural people. Nowhere
was that teamwork more in evidence than in threshing. Horses
accomplished much of the labor and were valuable possessions. My
father watched members of the Horse Thief Detective Association
wearing badges and marching in parades in Pine Village.
Commissioned by the governor, these organizations threatened to
exercise frontier justice if any crooks were caught.
The marriage of horse power and iron implements gave blacksmiths
all the work they needed. My great-great-uncle Tommy Fenton, Pine
Village's blacksmith, and his assistant devised a shoe to
prevent the famous harness horse Dan Patch from
'interfering,' or skinning one front leg by striking it
with the other front hoof. Until Daniel Messner sold Dan Patch to
M. W. Savage of Minnesota, Tommy shod 'the Fastest and Most
Popular Harness Horse in all the World's History,' as a
1913 advertisement proclaimed (see Floyd Clymer's Album of
Historical Steam Traction Engines, page 98). Two of Dan
Patch's special shoes were set in concrete as a modest monument
in front of the blacksmith shop and probably were buried there when
people who could not have known the history of those horseshoes
recently erected a building over the site.
Page: 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
Next >>