Family history, Moreland

Family history recalled by Ellis Dalton and Lowene Alta Barrett Moreland

(taken from interview August 27, 1994)

            When Amos and Rose Moreland moved to Audubon County, they bought an 80-acre farm from James Baker of Exira that was located two miles east of Audubon and one mile north [it currently is owned and operated by Earl Olsen]. Later, they sold that farm and purchased a 120-acre plot just south of their first Audubon County homestead [which is now operated by son Wayne Moreland].

            Ellis attended school in a country schoolhouse “80 rods” (a quarter mile) east of the intersection of County F-32 and the dirt road that passed his house.

            “We used to go into the ditch to get water from a drainage tube to drink,” Ellis said. “Two kids carried it in a bucket.”

            Ellis attended school until he was in ninth grade, when he and a neighbor boy, who lived on the farm to the north, skipped school on a whim. “I didn’t graduate; I quit,” he says, grinning mischievously.

            However, Lowene Alta Barrett did graduate from high school. She started dating Ellis when she was 16, and they married soon after. Getting together for dates was a difficult proposition, particularly when it was muddy. So few people lived on the road where Lowene’s parents lived (now County N-36) that it was called “Lover’s Lane.”

            “When it was muddy, Ellis would come to meet me at the mile and a half north of our place,” Lowene said. “My dad would take me up in the wagon.”

            (Note: When Lowene’s parents, Orlando and Flora Barrett, moved to Audubon County from the vicinity of Coon Rapids in Carroll County, they bought what Lowene termed the “Hollendack” (sp?) place.)

            Also, Lowene said her grandparents lived a mile from William and Rebecca Moreland’s homestead near the now defunct Viola Center.

            Lowene remembered going to church at the Evangelical Church in Audubon [now the First United Methodist Church] and parking the buggy by what is now Foodland and eating Sunday dinner at the home of the Nickelsons or Joe Cobbs or other friends--each family took its turn cooking Sunday dinner for the group.

            She also recalled coming home from a church meeting with her mother, and the horse that was pulling them overturned their buggy in the ditch.

            “It’s a wonder we weren’t killed,” said Lowene.

            She also remembered staying at the home of her aunt Rose and uncle Amos, (the names, coincidentally, are identical to those of Ellis’ parents) across from the elementary school in Viola Center. Amos was a preacher for the Evangelical Church.

            When Ellis D. Moreland married Lowene in1930, Amos and Rose gave them $1,700 in real estate and farm property with which to begin operating the farm. In March of the following year, Amos and Rose moved to Audubon (until they were ready to move into their new residence, a Mr. M.M. McIntyre rented it from them for $30 a month).

            One of Rose’s sisters, Emma Stetzel Potter Jones Kraft, lived for a time in the upstairs of their home, burdened not only by a deformed left hand but also old age, the latter causing a slip and fall on a throw rug that further limited her range of movement.

            Ellis’ maternal grandmother, Catherine Albright Stetzel, also lived in Audubon, at 609 Leroy St., in later life. Lowene remembers once visiting Catherine’s place with the children of her brother-in-law, Lawrence Moreland, when the youngest--Mark--refused to get out of the car until sister Rosalee retrieved him. Lowene recalled him telling Rosalee, “Now, if I go in there, you’ve got to take care of me.”

            “She was kind of a mother to him,” says Lowene.

            Farming kept everyone so busy that children were often left to their own devices; Lowene remembers the kids at her house playing with miniature Coke bottles in their spare time.

            But life on the farm wasn’t all fun and games. Lard for cooking was rendered in a big iron kettle in the back yard. Washing clothes involved carrying water from an outside pump to the inside stove, heating it up, then carrying it out to put it into the washing machine in the wash house.

            When Ellis started farming, he bought a two-row cultivator called the John Deere “Bee”--which, at the time, was the latest in farming equipment. However, Lowene’s father, Orlando, dealt in horses, and that was what he used to cultivate. One day soon after Ellis obtained the tractor, Orlando observed Ellis plowing with it north of the farm house and declared, “It don’t do such a bad job [implying that horses were better but it didn’t fare too poorly].”

            Once, Ellis’ cultivator broke down, and Tom Finnerty, who lived on the first farm to the northeast, lent Ellis his cultivator, which had room for two riders but only cultivated one row at a time.

            Even the children got into the act of farming. Daughter Jeanette drove a tractor on binder to cut oats at 10 years of age.

            Like their neighbors, Ellis and Lowene tended livestock for slaughter and produce, which required constant feeding and care. They had a chicken house from whence they gathered eggs and a barn in which they milked cows.

            Ellis and Lowene remember life before electricity. To this day, Ellis still winds his grandfather clock, probably a habit from a time when all clocks ran on internal mechanisms.

            Still, yearning for electricity, Ellis and Lowene rigged up their own electricity plant in the basement. A string of 16 batteries encased in glass generated enough electricity to run the lights, a three-dial radio and a few other appliances in their home. 

            Once, when Lowene was using too many appliances simultaneously, “I about burnt the house down with it.”

            Just before a rural electric cooperative began digging poles, next-door neighbor Joe Farley attempted to stop the encroachment, arguing that it would make the cistern water hot in summer and cold in winter. His fears were unfounded, although many windmills still stand as reminders of  the days when wind powered the water pumps and electrical stations of every farmstead. (Yet today, no electrical line has ever been installed just north of what is now Wayne Moreland’s farm.)

            When it came to fixing farm equipment, Ellis often begged ignorance and sat in the shade with neighbor Victor Eddy while his brother, Lawrence “Ted” Duane, George Jorgensen, or even Lowene, fixed it.

            “I was the hired man all the time,” said Lowene.

            Once, Lowene said, “He sent me out to harrow in the field and in a little bit, he came a-running: ‘I can’t put the disk together--I’ll harrow and you go put the disc together.’ “

            When Ellis’ brother, Lawrence, was dying from brain cancer, he went down to his neighboring farm to help remove his farm equipment and livestock. “He [Ted] sat down in the chair on the north side of the house and cried when they took his cows away,” Ellis said.

            Ellis and Lowene have traveled extensively--visiting almost every state in the United States and many abroad--due in large part to the generosity of their daughter and son-in-law, Naomi and Harv Neumann. The foursome toured eight countries in Europe one spring, after Ellis changed his mind at the last minute.

            “Ellis says, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t care anything about it,’ “ Lowene said. “Then he sat in his rocking chair that night and said, ‘It wouldn’t be such a bad idea.’ “

            Everywhere they went in Europe--from London, England to Paris, France--Harv stood out in the crowd by constantly wearing a hat. (Being a minister, he felt he had to look professional at all times, said Lowene.)

            “All he did was look at churches; he wanted to go back and look some more, but we didn’t want to look at any more churches,” says Lowene.

            In Lowene’s lifetime, there has been more progress and change than in any generation preceding her, she said.

            Ellis agreed, adding that the standard of living continues to improve. “You can’t believe how [well] he [Wayne] has got it compared to what we had, or he (Amos Moreland) had.”

Assorted notes

•                 At one point, William and Rebecca Moreland and their growing family moved to Texas, hoping for a better life.

            “Well, they didn’t like it, I know,” said Lowene, not only in terms of economic opportunity but also in terms of climate.

•                 Amos had had an eye removed, either from accident or illness. He never wore a patch, which sometimes scared children--although Amos loved children and was not self-conscious about his affliction, said Lowene.

•     When Rose Moreland was living at the Friendship Home, she and Jim Neumann would get into fierce arguments about the character of Richard M. Nixon.

      “She loved Nixon,” said Lowene, “but Jim knew more about it than she did.”