My paternal grandparents Harry and Mary moved to Liberty in 1929. I am not sure whether they moved before the banks failed. If they did, they must have already bought the farm so to speak, because owing money on the farm was not something I heard in the family stories. My dad was the oldest and 10 years old when they moved. I know that especially because my brother was ten years old when we moved back to Liberty from northern Illinois and my dad would remark about that, his son, named for him, moved to Liberty at the same age he moved there.
My grandparents farmed with horses pulling plows and such, I am pretty sure because my grandpa didn't drive. (Well, he did try once and wrecked my dad's car, so the story goes.) They probably had about 40 acres. I know where that farm used to be, but the house and barns are gone. The last time I drove by, it was planted in soy beans. They must have had some cows, because my aunt married the milkman who picked up their milk. My dad and his siblings went to a one room school called Chaplin through the 8th grade. It was a brick or stone building that was used to store hay while I was in high school. Then Dad went into the village school through 11th grade and lived with his grandparents in Quincy to finish high school. The family sold a cow so that he could go to college at Western.
My dad told stories of turning over outhouses on Halloween in the village. He once tried to make a deal to work for a penny for a day, if the money could be doubled each day from then on. It didn't happen. Down the gravel road where my grandparents lived, still live some of the same families who lived there in the 1930s.
My grandma told me that my grandpa worked for the WPA and helped build "the hard road" (which is the cement highway 104). They must have done a pretty good job because that road wasn't resurfaced until the 1970s. Even my uncle who is the last one still living, the youngest child didn't know that. He remembered his dad working for the WPA, but he didn't know what he did. This last uncle was born out at the Liberty farm.
My grandpa was born in Indian Territory that is now Oklahoma. (His sister was a Sooner and one of his brothers left us rights to the oil on a property which has provided us with checkes for pennies once adecade or so.) They lived among the Cheyenne Arapahoe people where my grandparents worked to educate them in the ways of the white people. There is a lot of debate about the right and wrong of this today. But, my grandpa spoke and danced and knew a great deal about the Arapahoe people. He would perform in Chataqua presentations. He was an oddity for a community that was largely German and Polish. When I went to high school in Liberty, many people told me they remembered when my grandpa performed the Indian dances.
That is probably enough for now.
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