Submitter’s note: This is part one of a story written by Leatha Seitz Walker. Leatha (1899-1988) was born and raised in Brown County, just five miles east of Nashville. She was the daughter of Charles Henry Seitz and Nettie (Stull) Seitz. She had one sister, Fern (Seitz) Williams. This is Leatha’s story about her “Brown County Memories” as she was growing up, in her words, just as she wrote them for “Brown County Remembers.”

My grandparents emigrated from Bavaria; they arrived in Brown County in a covered wagon from Cincinnati in 1846. I have been told the trip from Germany took three months. This German heritage resulted in barrels of sauerkraut that were kept in the cellar on the farm where I grew up.

My father, like most farmers in Brown County, grew wheat and corn. He hauled them in a wagon to the Mill at Stone Head to be ground into flour and cornmeal. There was the usual big garden of vegetables. My mother canned much of the garden produce for winter. The cellar contained rows and rows of jars of home-packed food. Dried root vegetables, like sweet potatoes and turnips, were stored in the attic. We kept chickens for meat and eggs, cows for milk and cheese, and horses for farm work and transportation. We churned our own butter.

We had a hand-cranked telephone on the wall for local calls. The first family car was a 1917 Overland. Before the arrival of the car, all travel was by horseback, wagon, or by surrey with the fringe around the top. Once a week, on Saturdays, the family made a trip into Nashville. There were no bridges over Clay Lick or Salt Creek.

One treat, on Saturdays in the early 1900s, was an ice cream supper on the courthouse lawn. The suppers were sponsored by the local churches. The Methodist Church stood where the telephone building stands. The Presbyterian Church was the present Methodist Church on Jefferson Street. The First Christian Church was on Van Buren Street. It burned and was replaced by a brick church.

Dry weather created difficulties before the streets of Nashville were paved. The dust was so thick, doors and windows had to be kept closed when the wind blew. Just the opposite when it rained: The mud was so deep, travel was next to impossible.

Once a year we made a trip to Bloomington or to Columbus. We hauled produce in a wagon to sell. We bought winter clothes with the money. The 16 miles to Columbus began before daylight. On the return trip, the family didn’t reach the farm until long after dark. It could be rugged going when the weather was bad. Father often kept the team of horses harnessed in the barn ready to pull the wagons, carriages and autos out of the mud when they mired down on the road.

On Sundays, we counted the cars that went by our house on the Columbus Road. One Sunday I counted 14. That was heavy traffic. Oxcarts were going out of fashion, but I remember seeing a certain oxcart pass our house fairly often.

I went to the one-room Clark School, which was next to our farm, and then I went to high school in Nashville. The high school was built opposite the old gym on the east side of Van Buren Street. The school was a brick building. The lower grades were on the first floor. The high school was on the second floor. The first year, my sister and I drove to school with a horse and buggy. The horse was kept in the stable opposite the Minor house during school hours. In 1915 and 1916, our sophomore and junior years, my sister, Fern, and I roomed at the Minor house, later bought by the Art Guild.

During our senior year, we also went back and forth to school in a buggy, but Lee Jackson drove. Lee lived 8 miles further out on the Columbus Road, but he lived at our house during the school year and went to high school at Nashville. After I graduated, I went on to Indiana University.

The first grocery I remember in Nashville was the Star Store on the northwest corner of Main and Van Buren owned by Jimmy Tilton. My mother could buy more steak there for 25 cents than our family could eat at one meal.

If you didn’t churn your own butter, you could buy butter at the store fresh from the country. Farm wives who churned had individual molds for their butter, and one could tell on which farm it was made. If housewives in Nashville thought a farm wife kept a clean house, they would buy her butter.

Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society