The Harry Mathis story was written by Richard F. Reed and was first published in the Wednesday, January 8, 1975, issue of the Brown County Democrat.
Harry Mathis is a retired former teacher and construction worker. He is the oldest of 11 brothers and sisters.
His maternal grandparents, Samuel McClary and Mary Ann Brandstatter McClary, owned a big farm on Green Valley Road where Harry’s sister Laura and her husband, Claris Keaton, now live.
The farmhouse was built by John Voland, with whose brother, Ed, Harry worked as a builder for 22 years.
Harry has spent a large part of his life around that neighborhood. It was there that his mother (another Mary Ann McLary) was born, and there that his grandmother McLary died in 1880.
Years later Samuel married again to Margaret Archer. Harry’s grandfather Jeremiah Mathis moved to the county in 1876 from Illinois when Harry was 3 years old.
But Jeremiah had evidently lived in the hills O’ Brown at an earlier date. He entered the Union Army from Nashville on January 3, 1864, according to official records and is said to have taken part in General Sherman’s march to the sea. He married Elizabet Reed of Brown County. Their son William Mathis was Harry’s father. Jeremiah died in 1891, eight years before Harry was born.
Of the 11 children born to William and Mary Ann McLary Mathis, Harry, Ray and Alpha (Sipes) now live in Bloomington; Richard in Iowa City, Ia.; Eudora (Steinke) in Tuttle, S.D.; Olive (Steinke) in South Bend, Indiana-Olive and Eudora married brothers: Mary Jane (Weisman) in San Diego, Calif.; Maurice, Sam and Sale all near Nashville, as well as Laura (Keaton) who occupies the old McLary home place on Green Valley Road.
All the siblings except Sam were graduated from Brown County High School. The William Mathies’s made their home with the McLary’s until they bought a farm from Sarah Hoy on what was called Hobbs Branch and later known as Brooks Hollow.
While living there Harry and his brother Ray were promised by their dad that they could go barefoot, come Easter, and they eagerly awaited the day. Easter morning dawned, however overnight an inch or more of snow had fallen. Harry had second thought but off came Rays shoes for the summer, snow or no snow!
Harry went to Green Valley School, where his first teachers were Joshua Bond and Elsie Calvin. Eudora Kelley took him to school on his very first day. There were 35 or 40 boys and girls. Put in a seat with two bigger boys, Harry kept finding himself pushed off the seat into the aisle.
He was moved up front and sat during his first three or four years with a cousin, Myrtle Hoy. Harry remembers there was a good wagon road in those days from Green Valley to Kelp and to Stone Head. Of course, everybody walked to school.
The William Mathies’s bought a farm on Salt Creek from a Doctor Cook in 1907. Sam was born there and has lived in that house ever since, except for a few years following his marriage. Frank Harden and family occupied it previously. The Hardens moved into the place the Mathies’s left on
Hobbs Branch. There was no road along the bluff to the Salt Creek farm house. It was reached by traveling the creek bed. Finally, a road was built by Harry’s dad and their neighbors. It took them several years. Harry remembers the creek bed.
Harry grew up on that farm and stayed there until he married Ether Pogue in Bloomington on February 19, 1923.
Harry remembers those early years as an almost continuous struggle to keep enough chopped-a chore he shared with brother Ray. He seldom went to Nashville until he started high school. One day, while Harry was walking to town, Dr. Ray Tilton came along in one of the autos owned by a Brown Countian and offered him a ride.
“I was scared of the thing”, Harry admits. “I wouldn’t get in — just kept on walking.
There were horses on the farm, and he remembers riding them a lot. He and his dad also made wagon trips to a mill owned by Ben Petro to get corn and wheat ground into meal and flour-until the mill’s boiler blew up, one morning.
McDonalds mill was in Nashville, across the street from where Earl Bond lived. The Calvert mill was in Trevlac, to which Mr. Calvert gave his name (spelled backward). And there was another mill at Stone Head. An uncle of Harry’s, Charles Taylor, made their sorghum at his mill on Owl Creek.
As boys, Harry and Ray made a little spending money hoeing corn for a neighbor and helping granddaddy McLary build fence and sheer his sheep. The boys got paid when the wool was sold. Latter, Harry worked two summers for Emmons Clark for $20.00 a month and $26.00 a month the second year, getting home on weekends.
To be continued.
Submitted by Pauline Hoover
Brown County Historical Society
