Editor’s note: This is the story of Bramble Stogdill as told by Mary Louise Ogle Fleetwood.
Bramble Stogdill, son of Sherman and Lula Stogdill, was born in 1896 at Elkinsville, Johnson Township. When his older sister came home from school and saw him, she said, “You little red-faced devil; I’ll just throw you in the bramble patch.” Four years later, when the census was taken, his parents named him Bramble. Years ago, sometimes babies were not given names until the next baby came.
When Bramble was very young, Pauline David Anthony and her mother lived with Bramble’s parents. Pauline and Bramble had fun times together. One day they were out playing and Pauline got some burdock burrs in her long hair. When his father came home, someone suggested he might whip them, but instead he cut both children’s hair very, very short. Pauline’s mother was very upset, but the father said that in six weeks, it would all grow back.
In 1910, Bramble’s father got a job taking the census in Brown County. The pay was 85 cents a day. Bramble carried the mail by horseback for James Wilkerson from Nashville to Elkinsville. The roads were very muddy, making the trip a slow one. The postmaster at Elkinsville was Thomas N. Browning (Mort Browning). Mort thought Bramble was late too many times, so he asked for a postal inspector to come to Nashville and ride with him to Elkinsville. On the trip they had a two-wheeled cart and it was raining. They held an umbrella over their heads as they rode. The inspector was a very large man and it was quite crowded in the cart. Upon arriving at Elkinsville, Mort said, “It doesn’t matter if we are a day late, because if you don’t get the roads fixed, there will be no mail.”
To bring the mail from Nashville, Bramble left Elkinsville and went to Nashville by way of Kelp. He watered his horse at the Aynes House and came out on State Road 46, at what is now the west gate of the Brown County State Park. Bramble put his horse up at the Davids’ stable on East Main Street behind the Pittman House (now the Nashville House). When it was extremely muddy, he would leave a horse in Nashville so each day he’d have a fresh one to ride back to Elkinsville. The salary for Bramble was 75 cents a day. Sherman, Bramble’s oldest brother, also carried mail. It is estimated that a mail carrier salary in 1983 was 100 times that of Bramble’s in 1913.
John Sherrill was the first Route 1 mail carrier in Johnson Township. His son, Cleve, carried mail in the 1900s. John Sherrill taught school at Browning School in Johnson Township. He was a very good teacher. He chewed tobacco but made a rule that no one could chew (including himself) except at recess and at noon, and that no one could spit in the ink wells on the desks.
Bramble went to Illinois to work and came back in 1916 to be married to Iva Belle Vaught, a Bloomington girl. After church, they got into a fight, and Bramble was cut badly on his arm. In four days, gangrene set in. The arm was amputated in Columbus. After recovery, he and Iva Belle Vaught were married in March of 1916. This incident created a degree of fame for Bramble in Brown County. They had two children, but separated in 1920. During Bramble’s lifetime he was married four times. Bramble went to Burlington, Iowa, and stayed west of the Mississippi River ever since.
It is said that William Sherman Stogdill was a soldier in the Civil War, on the Confederate side, and when he returned home to Brown County, he was infected with smallpox. He was cared for in the barn until he died. Family members took the body on a sled to the top of Lucas Hill and buried him. Years later, in 1900, William’s brother, James Harvey Stogdill, traded two cows for two gravestones. One was for William Sherman Stogdill and the other was for his mother, Mariah Elkins Stogdill, in the Elkinsville Cemetery. These events were learned by William’s nephew, Bramble, who stumbled upon the stone while ginseng hunting when he was a boy and asked his father about the old grave.
— Brown County Historical Society
