VC HISTORY, EPISODE 4 with Don Richter

DACC Executive Director of Public Relations and VC History host, Lara Conkin sits down and talks with Don Richter.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to BC History, where we discuss the fascinating and lesser-known 200-year history of Vermilion County, Illinois. I'm your host, Laura Conklin, and my guest today is Don Richter. Don and I are members of the Vermillion County 200th Anniversary Celebration Committee, and Don is one half of History Royalty in Vermilion County, along with Sue Richter, who is the director of the Vermilion County Museum, and Don's wife. So, Don, tell me, I've got a little bit of history for you here, that you were in the grain and fertilizer business and you did some tax accounting on the side. And I know that for years you've done the Days Gone By column in the commercial news, and now you're doing a column for the bicentennial. What got you started in history? What got you started writing that column?

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Well, my father got me started in history when I was a kid. He told me, said, Now listen to the older people and you'll learn something. And he told me, you never learn anything when you're talking. He said there's plenty of talkers, but not many good listeners. So and he took me around to older people that he knew, and most of them were from the 1800s. Oh my goodness. So I gave my my I got my first interview, I think, from a Civil War veteran's wife. And she was nearly a hundred years old. And I think that was in 1951 I got the interview with her.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

She was younger when she married him, but she knew a lot of history of Vermont County.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

And uh from then on, why my mother kept me supplied with my with things to write on, and I kept little booklets from a time I was young. I just wrote down things and then people I talked to and put some up my head, but I've been here for almost half of that 200 years, so some of it may be slipping away. And I don't think I'm royalty either.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Well, we want to talk to not to suggest in any way, shape, or form that you are one of the old people, but we want to listen to the folks who have a little more uh mis seniority than than we do. Um so now you how long did you write the days gone by column?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Uh a little over 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

A little over 30 years. And you have lived in Vermillion County your whole life?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Whole life. And same farm my whole life.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Okay, so where and where is that?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Mile west of Oakwood.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Mile west of Oakwood. Okay. So you've lived on the same farm in Vermilion County your whole life. Yes. You've talked to the old people. I are you is your farm one of the centennial farms?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

It could be, but we never followed up on it.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Okay. So how long has your family been in Vermilion County?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Uh my grandfather Jacob, great-grandfather Jacob, came up from Missouri because he's an abolitionist and it didn't fit in too well.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

So they came up in the late 1850s.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Right ahead of the Civil War.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

And uh yes, uh they were the whole family was abolitionists.

unknown 3:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Which wasn't really popular in Vermont County back then. It wasn't popular.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Right, yeah. So today we were going to talk about Conky Town.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

And I'm I'm from Oakwood. I I didn't always grow up there. I also was lived in Indiana, but when we moved back to Oakwood in the late 90s, I feel like we went and got a Christmas tree at some place that was called Conky Town or was Conky Town Tree Farm.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

You were Conky Town Tree Farm. Right in the metropolis when you were there.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Okay. Well, that was um it was hard to find.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Well, Conky Town started out with a mill, one of the early mills in Vermillion County back in probably 1820s or well, in the early 30s, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

So Gristmill, Sawmill?

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Uh Gristmill. Gristmill, okay. People came from 40 miles away there to get things ground. And then it was on the south side of the uh salt fork, and the village grew up on the north side, but they had a log bridge across the river, which was pretty unusual, one of the early bridges in Vermine County. And then what I think doesn't get enough credit is the old country store keepers, the old country stores.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Because for probably 150 years in America, the old country store was where people got things, you know, it faded away.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

But uh if you had a crossroads or a mill, it wasn't long till you had a store there.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Because when you say the old country store, I think of Cracker Barrel. Um and also like the general store that they had on Little House on the Prairie.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yeah, the general stores were what?

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Um because the person that kept store was usually, if a store went on and made it, a lot of them failed. But if it went on and made it, the person running that store was usually a leader in the community. I mean, he could read and write. If he had a militia, a lot of times he was an officer in that, and he's the one people came to. Okay. And he was more educated than the general population. Unless you were like Abe Lincoln. Abe Lincoln ran a store for a short time in the 1830s in uh New Salem, Illinois. For about a year, I believe, and then it went uh winked out after about a year.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Isn't that one of his one of his failed business ventures?

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, it was. And right after that, well, it's almost the same year he got elected to the state legislature. So what do you think Illinois did? They put him on the financial committee for the state of Illinois. Well that was right from failure to success. And then a little later, they was ahead of that committee. And so Illinois wanted to put railroads, canals, and everything in, and Abe said, great. So they voted through the Internal Improvements Act. And in a few years, state money was trading for like 50 cents on the dollar. State almost went bankrupt.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

So Abe's Abe's expertise wasn't in finance, and he admitted that. But to get back to Conky Town, um, they had a store there, Conky ran it, and my great-grandfather, he was born in 1845, I believe, and he worked in the store.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Well, how much work he did, I don't know. He's talking as a boy. But anyway, I had an uncle, Uncle Ross, it was, and he wrote down some of the things that he remembered from that store. And one of the things we always got a kick out of was um the first time Conky turned it over to him, he wanted to go watch a racetrack on the Conky Town racetrack, which we knew there was no racetrack. We never knew there was racetrack in Conky Town.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

But anyway, what he made, a short note, he said, I ate all the candy I wanted that day. Yeah, so uh that was kind of good to have a record that goes back, you know, a first-hand record, because you hear all kinds of things, you know. And the old country store, I mean, they gathered a cast of characters around those that you know you can make a movie about.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Because they had the pop belly stove or a stove in wintertime, everybody came in and gather around. They had the regulars that stayed there. And they had no regular hours. They opened up in the morning and stayed as late as somebody stayed.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Then at the end of the year, they settled up. Once a year, people settled up. There was very little done during the year, and they s excuse me, settled up with trade or um very rarely cash or a note for the next year. Oh. So it was a it was a tough business.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Yeah. That's so um where would the I mean if they own if they were only settling up once a year, where did the store owner get the money to get goods?

SPEAKER_00 7:41

He bit he borrowed money. He borrowed money. Oh well now. He was like a bank too.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

It was like a credit card. People come in, buy it, put it on the tab, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Oh wow. Um would the would the general store owner have been also the owner of the mill or no, it was different.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

It was different. Okay. Some towns it was that way, but it wasn't in Conky Town.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Okay. So where exactly is Conky Town or was Conky Town?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

About a mile south of Muncie, Illinois. Just about a mile south.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Okay. Because I re I I like I said, I remember going and getting a Christmas tree.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

But if you that was that was almost 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

And if you asked me today to find the Christmas tree farm where it was, I would not remember how to get there.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah, you take the old state road, we call the old state road, Lincoln Trail Road. Okay. And it's off it, I don't know which road goes off, little road goes off it to where Clonkytown was.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Okay. And I have been recently on the old Lincoln Trail Road. So where why is it called the Lincoln Trail Road?

SPEAKER_00 8:51

That's when Lincoln traveled when he came to Danville.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

That's where he traveled when he came to the circuit in Danville.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Okay. It's very when you think about um 150 and the road between Henning and Catlin, this that Lincoln Trail kind of goes off in between them.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

It's kind of Yeah, it's about a mile, mile and a quarter west of Oakwood in terms of there.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah. So I know when we were talking with Larry, Myersville was great, and then they put the train in, they put the railroad in, and Myersville got, they they did away with Myersville and Bismarck rose up.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

So if Conkyville is was just a mile or so south of Muncie, same thing.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

When the railroad went in and Muncie and Fifth Inn came, Conkeytown died. It came in in the late late uh 60s, about 19 1870 when the railroad came through. And uh I think Conkytown lost their post office in 1870.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

They had it from 53 to 70, the post office there. But um like I said, during the Civil War, people letters mailed to Conky Town store address and it got there.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Wow. Well, I know um my my father-in-law has uh has a nickname and he grew up in Ridge Farm, spent his whole life in Ridge Farm. And while he has a proper name, he has this nickname, and everybody in Ridge Farm knows his nickname. And uh one time somebody mailed a letter to uh I think they only put his nickname, they didn't even put his last name on it in Ridge Farm, and it got to him because small town, everybody knows everybody. Yes, yes. I'm assuming Conky Town would have worked the same way.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

And they got, and that's in the newspapers, I've got newspaper articles, Conky Town, Illinois. And uh it was never really, other than the post office, you know, it was not much of a town.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Uh but it was quite a place.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

But one thing my uh great-grandfather Pate did, they were market hunters, I think, at the time. And he wrote about the uh cranes out on the prairie, full of cranes, that they killed cranes for market.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

And uh everything was plentiful, the uh wild uh wild animals. And he was one of the few people that mentioned the uh passenger pigeons. He telled that the passenger pigeons blocked the sky when they came over. There was millions of them back then.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

And he's the only first hand report I've got of passenger pigeons in Virginia County.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

So passenger pigeons is a a breed, not like the people, not like people sending messages.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

They hired them to extension. There was millions and millions of them. And they defoliated forests when they roosted when they came to land.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

So now we have crows.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yeah, yeah. But it was pretty interesting. That's what you look for when you have something new like that, or a diary, you know, uh-huh, the thing you haven't heard of before or seen before.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

So while I have you here, I'm I I've told you this before at our at our meetings. I'm very curious about Denmark because I I obviously I knew Denmark Road. I knew that you went across the the river the lake. Um and I just kind of assumed that that was you know in reference to people who had come to Vermillion County from Denmark, just like Belgium is people who came from to Vermillion County from Belgium. So tell me what happened to Denmark.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Well, Denmark was a pretty rough place. That's why it never got considered for its county seat. I mean, thought they thought about it, but didn't have a chance. It was the place that uh like your old West Towns that they got out of control, I think is what happened to Denmark. Okay, it's kind of like the saltworks here. They had you know cabins at the saltworks for the workers, and it was a pretty rough place. That's why the first county seat went to Butler's Point. Because it's more civilized, you might say.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Where is Butler's Point?

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Right at Catelyn, just a little ways west of Catelyn.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Catelyn's almost Butler's Point.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Okay, and that was the first county seat?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

First county seat, and that's where Bob the God's Acre Cemetery is. And that's where the early Vermont County pioneers are buried, they can still go to God's Acre Cemetery.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Okay. Um so I know I realize that things they've they've built up, and so things are not and and also with cars and things, you can travel from one place to another faster. But Denmark now lays at the bottom of Lake Vermilion, correct? They flooded that and just did away with the town.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

But that's Danville. So where was Danville when Denmark was a wild and unruly place?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Danville would have been right, the main part would have been right where the courthouse is now, that area, small area there.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Because Danville's growing up in hazel bushes and vines and things, you know, when they first settled it. So the other places were kind of like Danville. I mean, uh like Butler's Point had a lot of people there. Okay. And uh but uh when Beckwith donated land for Danville, and that's where they moved to.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

And that's Dan Beckwith, which is why they call it Danville. Okay. Um, and so were the people in Denmark from I mean, were they from Denmark? Is that why they called it that?

SPEAKER_00 14:40

I don't think so. I don't know why they called it that.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Because there was they can what from what I've read, they can there may have been a few from Denmark, but they just kind of came in, that's where they can uh the people with the bars or taverns were back then, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

So but the people Belgium is called Belgium because that's where they came from.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Because that's where they came from.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Because my my aunt um was originally from that area, um, which we did not realize, and it's one of those things, you know, you talk to the old people. Um I grew up with my aunt older, and I I knew that her family was from Belgium, she was born here. I did not realize that as a child they spoke French in their home because she never spoke French. Um, I took three years of French, she never helped me with my homework. Um but as as an older person when she was near the end of her life, she had suffered some dementia and she started speaking French. Wow, nobody knew she spoke French. She never did that. That's amazing. She isn't that amazing. Um so I'm I'm you are one of those guests that you know a lot about a lot of subjects in Vermilion County because you've made such a study of it. Um tell me about the salt works. What are those?

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Well, they they knew about those for hundreds of years. Even the Native Americans and animals came to the brine where it came up. You know, they found the salt lake back then. And uh the Indians, I believe, built wooden wooden troughs to catch it even. And uh so when they came in and developed it, they dug down, I think they dug down maybe 50 feet deep to bring the water brine up, and then they brought the uh kettles in from Ohio up the Wabash River and as far as they could up the Vermay, and then they brought them in here by oxen. And uh it was a good business until salt got cheaper back east, you know, uh-huh and better ways of processing it. But it was left with the seas when we had the inland sea.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Okay. And where were the salt works?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

About mile, two miles west of Danville, yeah, where you go down to the Middle Fork River. Okay. It was right almost to the Middle Fork River, just this side of the Middle Fork River as far as I know. Is that um like in the in the Shangri-La area or it'd been on the area off the left where there's a pull-off, you can pull off 150 on the south side of the road. Okay. The salt forks were just a little ways south of there. We don't know the exact location.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

The only one that ever knew was Chuck Nartoglio from Oakwood, and he'd heard from the old miners. He was a miner. I think he was born maybe early 1900s. And he knew people that knew where they were.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

I live above the pol I live in the polywogs, and above the polywogs, and that was all that was coal mining, that wasn't salt mining. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yeah, salts were they weren't mined, they were just wells, deep wells.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

They went down the ground.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Okay. But the salt kettle is the the symbol for the county, correct?

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah, they brought the water up and rendered the salt, boiled it down, got the salt.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

And then they would sell that back to the earth, ship it to the east. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Um they started that in the early 19 1820s.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Before there was a county.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Okay. So 1826, because we're celebrating 200 years, 1826 we became a county. Uh, the very next year, 1827, Danville was established because they'll be celebrating their 200th next year. But even some of the other small towns in the county are celebrating major anniversaries this year and next year.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Yes, they are. Yes, they are.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah. And we're still, do you know? Uh, do you have a date for when we're going to place the marker for Abraham Smith in Ridge Farm?

SPEAKER_00 18:43

It'll be in the autumn. It'll be in the autumn. Okay. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

All right. So that's another story to tell someday. Um, I'm going to uh pressure your lovely wife to come and and join me as well on this program. Um, our next episode is going to be with Mrs. Sybil Mervis, so that'll be fun. But Don, I want to thank you uh for coming in today.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Left the covered bridge out.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Oh, well, tell me about the covered bridge. We don't have to.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

That was a big part of Conkey Town after Concertown was gone, really. It can't, I think came in the uh maybe 1860s. I can't remember the exact date. But uh it was a place where everybody went. They had a place down there where you could have picnics and things like that. Oh wow. Quite a thing. But uh we talk and talk about it another time.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

So is that that was the bridge that that the wooden bridge that they could take the place of the log bridge. It took the place of the log bridge. Okay. Well, I'm I was from Vermilion County, Indiana with two L's, but Park County, obviously, home of all the covered bridges in Indiana. I do love my I do love me a covered bridge.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Yeah, we we had one for about a hundred years.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Oh wow. And it burned. Okay, so that's it, it's nothing left of it. It's gone entirely. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you start to feel better. And um I'm sure we will talk again. Okay. So thank you. And thank you for joining us on VC History.