Jessica Cyders Archives

February 20, 2015February 10, 2021

Bean Cemetery

I’m drawn to the quiet dignity of rural cemeteries. It doesn’t matter if I don’t know anyone there. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Bean Cemetery in Rome Township near Guysville in Athens County, Ohio, or it’s the Hitt Cemetery near Arbor or it’s the High Hill Cemetery north of Neely’s Landing. I’m not big on ghosts and spirits, but I feel a kinship walking among those strangers.

You can click on the photos to make them larger.

Feeling the bonds

When I did a story about the Cruse Cemetery near Toga returning to nature, reader Larry Points left a comment that shows he has experienced those same feelings:

“…one will find the Gravel Hill Cemetery on a knoll with a scenic overlook of the countryside. In it is a tombstone for a nine-year-old girl who died in the 1880s. Upon the stone is this eroded inscription: “Beautiful lovely she was but given, a fair bud to earth to bloom in heaven.” Standing alone at such a stone, in such a setting, imagining shared grief gathered round so long ago, one is drawn to the emotional ties which bond we humans one to another.”

Bean Cemetery

I didn’t find a lot of online information about the cemetery. FindaGrave reports there are 104 internments in the cemetery, with about half of them photographed.

As you might suspect, there are a lot of Beans buried there. (Curator Jessica commented, “They grow lots of Beans in that part of the county. Actually, that is true, in both senses of the word.”

The fields aren’t green today

Athens County gets Cape weather about two days after Cape. The lush green fields I photographed at the end of August have seen snow in the past few days and there’s more on the way.

The temperatures in West Palm Beach as I type this are a chilly 45 and falling. That’s a lot better than Athens, where it is -2 and falling (wind chill -15), headed for a low of -11 before sunrise.

Maybe Florida isn’t so bad after all.

February 15, 2015January 18, 2022

Cairo Custom House

The Missourian has been full of stories of late about proposed courthouse shuffling and new facilities here and there. One consequence may be that the Common Pleas Courthouse may cease to be a courthouse. That raises the question of what will happen to one of the most iconic structures in Cape Girardeau.

Here’s a suggestion: turn it into a museum like the Cairo Custom House Museum in Cairo.

For all the time I’ve spent in Cairo, the last time I was in the old Custon House was when it was being used as a police station at the time of the riots in the late 1960s. I’ll have more about that on a later date.

A serious “Wow!” factor

Mother, Curator Jessica and I really weren’t expecting much when we walked into the museum right before closing time. We weren’t two steps into the building when my friend, the curator for the Athens County Historical Society and Museum, broke the Coveting Commandment into a whole bunch of pieces.

First off, the building itself is a magnificent piece of architecture with features like arched brick ceilings that I’ve never seen before.

Because there are so many rooms, it was possible to create amazing grouping of exhibits. It would be easy to spend days in the place and still not see everything.

By the way, this website points out that the fireplaces like this one weren’t used for heating, but were used for ventilation.

Cairo Custom House Museum gallery

Here’s a taste of what you’ll see in the facility. I’ll talk about the darker history of the building in another post. I’ll also follow up with more photos on my next visit when I have more time. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

February 10, 2015March 19, 2021

Eclipse – A Company Town

Back in 1955, just about the time I was becoming aware of music, Tennessee Ernie Ford came out with the song 16 Tons that contained the lines

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

I ended up living in two parts of the country where company towns and company stores were common: Southeastern Ohio and North Carolina.

The Eclipse Company Store

There is an excellent website that gives the history of the Eclipse Company Town, built by the Hocking Valley Coal Company between 1900 and 1902. This building, now occupied by Kiser’s Barbecue, was the pay station and general store for the miners. Married miners without children rented the two front rooms on the second floor.

Curator Jessica said that workers were frequently paid in “scrip” that could only be spent at the company store. The Athens County Historical Society and Museum has some coins and one very rare $2 scrip in its collection. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Building saw various uses

The mine operated from 1900 until the early 1930s when it and other area mines fell victim to the Depression. It was called back into service in 1940 as part of the World War II effort, and continued to operate until 1948.

After the mine closed, the store was used as a barn, a machine shop, and then a VFW Hall in the 1950s. It is a very popular restaurant these days.

Located on Hocking-Adena Bike Path

One reason for its success is its location on the rail-to-trail Hocking-Adena Bike Path. Live music was playing the evening Jessica and I went there. Bikes of every description – a triplet, recumbents, cruisers, beater bikes and kid bikes with training wheels – were parked all around.

Eclipse Company Town today

The website says the town is comprised of 12 company houses, one shotgun house and the company store.

Company towns came about for several reasons.

The mines were in relatively isolated areas with little transportation available, so the work force needed a place to live.
Because they were self-contained, the use of scrip was common. The stores allowed workers to buy on credit, so they came to “owe their soul to the company store,” making for a captive labor force.
At the first hint of any union organizing, workers would be put out of their company houses, so they not only didn’t have jobs and were in debt, but they and their families were homeless.

Nearly 2500 company towns

I’ve read that the United States had more than 2,500 company towns, housing 3 percent of the U.S. population at one time.

I remember the neatly-kept company town of McAdenville just outside Gastonia, N.C.. It was incorporated in 1881 to house workers at the McAden Mills, which has been known as Pharr Yarns since 1939.

It’s still known as Christmas Town USA, for the huge Christmas lighting displays that attract some 300,000 automobile visitors a year.

January 30, 2015

Department of “Why Bother?”

I didn’t pay much attention to this building when I was northbound through Glouster to the Burr Oak Lodge where I was staying the last time I was in Athens, Ohio, but I did a double take on the way south. (Glouster is the place where I shot the epitome of a small-town football game last fall.)

That is one skinny building

I had to stop to make sure it wasn’t an optical illusion.

No, it really WAS that skinny. It got bigger at the other end, but I could easily span the back wall without having to stretch my arms out as big as I had gestured before to describe the size of a fish that got away. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Only eight bricks wide

That wall was only eight bricks wide. If a standard brick is eight inches long, and you figure the space for the mortar between the bricks is half an inch or less, that would be, let’s see 8″ x 8 bricks x 7 mortar rows @ 1/2 inch equals just 67.5 inches or a little more than 5-1/2 feet wide. Allowing for the thickness of the walls, the open space inside the thin end would have had to have been less than four feet.

Why would anybody use that many bricks, not to count the labor of laying them, for such a small return of space?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but my guess is that both bricks and labor were cheap in Glouster when that building was constructed.

Bricks were a big deal

Here’s a really good history of the region that explains how important the iron, coal and brick industries were.

Curator Jessica is somewhat of a brick expert, so she’s always looking for SE Ohio bricks like this Hocking brick she spotted when we were walking around the Ray Charles Plaza in Albany, Ga.