Old Landmark The Clement Silo

 

Clement Silo. Always one of my favorite drives through the country side is on Reiter View Road out behind Crayne to check on the old Clement Silo that was built back in the early 1900's. Always a fascinating sight to see, knowing how old the concrete structure is and the difficulty it must have been building it all those years ago. 

 

An impressive structure that has marked this area for as long as anyone can remember is the concrete silo that sits at the corner of Mexico and Amos Roads. It has always been a landmark of this area. Mr. Norman Wheeler who was born and raised in this area remembers that many years ago a large barn set close by the silo, and across the road facing the entrance to the Reiter View road set the old 2-story home of Major Jeff Clement. 

 

Mr. Wheeler told me that Jeff Clement owned all the land in that area and he is the one that had the silo built. Mr. Wheeler said that his grandfather, Henry Wheeler, help build this silo and that it was built in small sections at a time. The frame would be set, filled with the concrete, and let dry, the frame reset on top of the cured section and continued on until it was complete. They used some kind of a scaffold to be able to get it as tall as it is. The silo is most certain to have been built over 100 years ago. 

 

The silo has always fascinated me ever since I was a child and we would go driving by and I would see it, now that I have many, many years behind me, I am still fascinated by the sight of it, it's strong foundation and the height of it is truly amazing. It is an impressive sight from the road, but if you stand by the side of it and actually see the width and height of it, and to think that it was constructed without any of the modern equipment that we have today, it is even more impressive.

 

Think of the history that this silo has seen pass by on the road where it stands. The wagons of spar pulled by mules, going to the depot at Crayneville or to Mexico, and that cold night in February 1908 as the band of Nightriders in the dead of night with their torches burning, made their way to the A. H. Cardin farm a few miles down the road, and burned Mr. Cardin's tobacco factory, all this and much more that we don't know, has passed by this historic structure.

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You can always find something beautiful and interesting to see and wonder about as you drive our many county roads.

Pogue Landmark Home in Frances, KY

This historic home is located on Highway 70 in Frances, Kentucky.  I'm not sure who owns the home today, or the condition it is in,  (June 16, 2021), but it was beautiful in 2008 when this picture was taken.

In the year 1919, the Oliver School in Frances was being torn down.  It was being taken down with the logs, beams, and boards carelessly being tossed away.  This was a loss Marion Pogue could not bear to see happen.

He retrieved them to erect his house which became a home for him and his family and also a house of learning for his grandson, Forrest Carlisle Pogue, Jr. (1912-1996).  

In 1947 Marion Pogue sold the house to Ervin and Cornelia Brasher Woodall.  Upon the Woodalls moving in, they found many books left behind by the Pogues which were enjoyed by the Woodall family. 

Marion Pogue (1867-1952) was postmaster at Fredonia, and teacher at many rural schools and Dycusburh High School.

When Frances School was built, he became the first principal there in 1919.  He served four terms as state representative, one term as state senator, and nine years as inspector for the State Department of Education.  He also owned a drugstore and a grocery store in Frances. 

Nancy Martin Tabor of the Mexico community shared this information about the home.

Tolu was Hoppin' and Whiskey Boats were Outlawed

 Crittenden Press – Oct. 2, 1913

Down in Crittenden County, round about "the mouth o' Hurricane," a large number of the law are arresting the proprietors of "Whiskey boats," who have been running their floating blind tigers since the salons at Rosiclaire, on the Illinois shore were lidded. The fight against the rum demon in Crittenden has been a long hard and not always a successful one since reconstruction days.

One of the leading centers of population in Crittenden is Tolu, which set up as a rival of Hurricane post office about thirty-five years ago, with certain topographical advantages that augured success.

Not the least of these was that the home of Joel Guess, which topped a knoll west-southwest of the Devil's Elbow, as a parabolic, rather than diabolic curve in Hurricane Creek.

The city to be was composed of a sawmill, which made corn into meal when not making logs into lumber, and a department store consisting of one department in which staple groceries, stick candy, paraffin chewing wax, calico, chilled plows, sardines, cove oysters, ear bobs, striped blankets, plow gear, soda crackers and other necessaries and luxuries of life huddled close together under a clapboard roof, and surrounded a stove nearly as great in circumference as that in the cabin of the Arkansas Belle or the Will S. Hayes.

The stove was surrounded by a circle of nail kegs upon which tillers of the soil, logging men, flatboat men and other constituent elements of the spare population of a still heavily timbered section of Western Kentucky sat to discuss such public questions as to whether there would be any probability of the re-establishment of slavery in the event of a Democratic President's election and whether mast-fed hogs would be "up" or "down" at Evansville next autumn.

The waning rival of the then unmanned settlement, sometime referred to as Guess' sawmill and sometimes as Weldon's store, known as Hurricane Landing. The post office store, stood upon stilts near the river's brink, where the waters of Hurricane Creek, called "Harricane" locally, and as often as not by the "mud" clerks of the steamers as well as the mates, although of course, not by the captains, met the Ohio river under the spreading branches of gnarled sycamores.

The creeks mouth afforded a harbor for store boats, floating shows and picture galleries as the boys called the tin type boats upon which the artist would put a set ring upon the finger of any patron without extra charge and make it look so natural that nobody who saw the picture could say the subject never wore a ring when the picture was taken. A.

When the post office store yielded one night to the upward pressure of a heaving sea during high water and floated out over the river bank, trailing its stilts beneath it to embark upon a voyage of uncertain termination, it was conceded even by those who had held out to the superiority of the landing as the site of a future city, that the settlement up at the Devil's Elbow had been appointed by fate to wear the laurels. From that time forward the settlement waxed.

All of this history is told because the good citizens of Crittenden County and they were many in proportion to the total population, were even then attempting to lay the rum demon by the heels. Before the settlement at Devil's Elbow had been given a name and when it was going by the bifurcated appellation of Weldon's store and Guess' mill a singularly potent stomach bitters known as "Tolu Tonic" was upon sale there.

The label of the bottles did not violate the law against the sale of spirituous vintage or malt liquors, but there was a high lonesome and headache in each bottle. So popular did Tolu Tonic become among the bibulously and convivially inclined, and so thriving was the business, done in the commodity that the humorists in the neighborhood began calling the point at which it was obtainable "Tolu." The jest finally crystallized into a name and that is now official.

The joke upon the law was lithographed forever upon the United States map. "Tolu" got the post office and became a flourishing little city. It has always been outwardly dry, but doubtless the oldest inhabitant will admit confidentially that there has always been a nip in sight for the worldly wise either in the form of straight liquor boot-legged or sold on a trading boat or under a winking label as bitters. It has rarely been necessary to pull a Leavenworth skiff to Rosiclaire or Elizabethtown in order to buy a quart of tanglefoot.

Since the days when some of the backwoodsmen marveled at the manner in which the first "screw propeller boat," ran up stream without stern wheel or side wheel in sight, and when old hunters brought their long deer rifles down to the bottoms to shoot a strange varmint when the first siren whistle awoke the echoes between Shawneetown and Golconda, the war upon, the rum demon has been earnestly prosecuted by the sober and thoughtful and law abiding citizens of Crittenden.

But the blind tiger still lurks in the jungle, the boot-legger still walks abroad and the whiskyboat turns her nose into the "mouth Ole' Harricane" when the lid is put on at Rosiclaire.

And so runs many a story of this persistent attempt of the strong and the good to prevent the weak from indulging in their weaknesses and the wicked from profiteering by their wickedness.

Marion's Taverns and Saloons

There is no comparison between the beer-joints and saloons of today and the mid-19^th century tavern. One hundred fifty years ago a tavern was a rest stop for weary travelers. The taverns served meals, provided overnight lodging, stabling for their animals, as well as the selling of "spirits", in the same manner, as does a modern super-market in a wet territory.

Since a tavern was such as asset to the reputation of a state, Kentucky law required that each applicant apply for a $10-a-year tavern-operation license, furnish proof of his good reputation, his ability and intention of performing full normal services, and furnish a $100 performance bond.

On September 9, 1844, John S. Gilliam was issued a license to keep a tavern in his home in Marion. It is quite likely that Gilliam did this only with the intention of providing what in those days was considered a necessity to a new town, for he could not have had more than two guest rooms in his one-story cabin.

On May 5, 1845, in an effort to control the prices to be charged in the rapidly multiplying number of taverns that were springing up at almost every crossroad in the infant County, the Crittenden County Court set this bill of tavern rates: Breakfast, dinner and supper - .25¢, Night's lodging – 12 ½ ¢. Horse feed – 12 ½ ¢, Whiskey per ½ pint – 5 ¢, Rum, brandy or wine per ½ pint – 10 ¢.

E. A. Calvert built on the northwest corner of Salem and Fords Ferry Streets (the site of the Marion Fire Department today). This building became Calvert's Tavern, the second tavern and first real hotel in Marion.

On Feb. 9, 1846, John W. Williams rented this building and was issued a license to operate Calvert's Tavern for one year. The next year Calvert's Tavern was purchased by John H. and James W. Bruff, and they leased it to John C. Henson who operated it until the 1860's.

In 1870 Calvert's Tavern was run by N. B. Douglas, and it was called White's Tavern. It was the first stagecoach tavern stop in Marion.

From an editorial in The Crittenden Press dated June 22, 1893, Deputy Sheriff John Pickens shared this information. "Yes sir, a reputable citizen of the Eastern portion of the county told me that he had every reason to believe that "Moon shine" liquor was being manufactured in his neighborhood, but as for as proving it, or locating the worm, that was something, that could not be done, even though you might be cocksure it is within three miles of you."

Two or three years ago, continued Sheriff Pickens, a still was operated in that section. Men have told me how they contrived to get 'a wee drap' of the mountain dew occasionally. To a certain cave they went; an oyster can and a string would successfully bring from the bowels of the earth a pint or quart, you put some silver in the can, lowered it with the string, you pulled on the string and behold the can had been transformed into a bottle.

An officer went on the search for that distillery, but he never captured it; he found "bar signs" but no "bar."