Historical Hargrove Bridge
|
Yep, the Hargrove bridge was built in 1917 and before that time, the boats
used to come up the river, but before that time we had sold our farm, we
lived up 53 and had 160 acres there. 53 run right through it. I plowed corn
right across 53 with a true blue double shovel because it run right through
our farm. We had sold our place and moved down on my Grandpa's place to
help him and it was 1917 when that bridge was built. And the boats would
come down through there and you could hear them they would blow their
whistles and three men would have to come out of the fields to crank that
bridge open by hand so the boats could pass through there. Me and my
younger brother would run down there and get on the bridge and ride it
around as it was cranked open. I have seen as high as six head of oxen come
across that bridge with wagons, you know boxed in wagons.
We had a big old shade tree down there. I have also seen that river froze
over so you could drive cattle across it, and see my grandpa now he owned
all that land and he moved in there from Illinois, and I guess the farming
country up there was so far ahead of us down here but in 1911 he was there
before then cause I was born in 1908 and I've got a big book where he kept
everything he had done. He kept it down, Teddy Joe has got it, my oldest
son has got it. It is interesting to look through. He had telephone run
down there, he had three big red barns, a stallion barn, pump house,
granaries, cribs, weigh sheds, where you drive your wagons over them and
weigh them. He had his own light system. He just lived like a person in
town way back in 1911. I remember you could just go into a gate and pull a
rope and it would open and pull the rope again to shut them.
He really lived it up until we had a recession in the early 20's. I
remember him going way up in Wyoming and buying a couple of whiteface
bulls. He gave $1100.00 for one of them and $1200.00 for the other one.
That was a lot of money at that time. He had a bunch of whiteface cattle
and he had a man that didn't do anything but feed. He would feed all the
mules for the people to work and then he was all day long feeding and
taking hogs and things. Then he had a man that did mechanical work on his
big engines and things like that. As a kid I remember all them things.
He was one of the wealthiest men and he also had a part interest in that
mill in Poplar Bluff. He also owned a steam engine, all of that land, I
don't know if you know where the Carter District is or not, but it's over
on the other side of Big Island down where all the woods where, and he
worked a bunch of men down there, he rode a horse, he had so many of them
you know, my daddy filed saws for them when they weren't farming you know.
I'll never forget some of the stories, one of them especially I remember,
my Grandpa he used to tell me, I've heard him tell it two or three times,
he had a lot of hands working for him cutting logs and bank them out and
haul them into Poplar Bluff you see to the mill.
He said he had a bunch come in and hold church services there one night and
said it got where the men stayed up so late they weren't producing things.
He said he was riding along one day and saw this preacher sitting by the
stump and said when he rode up the preacher looked up at him and said
"Brother Hargrove I believe I can sit right here and the good Lord will
send the ravens to get me." My Grandpa told him if you sit there long
enough you'll starve to death.
I forgot to tell you about this partner of his that come from the Bluff,
Harvey Ruth on Saturdays he would come down to the country where my grandpa
farmed. He was partners with my grandpa in the mill, he wasn't partners in
the farm. He had a big red car, I guess it was a Packard I don't know but
there wasn't very many people had cars then. He would come by and he
brought a bunch of candy with him and he would throw it out at every house
he come to and us kids would look for that. He would throw out a bunch of
candy.
I have had quite a life, I don't know I have lived through a bunch of
depressions and recessions and six or seven wars and also a snowstorm
around 1917 that you couldn't even see the fence posts. It was really deep.
We moved to Qulin in the fall of 1928. you know where John Rodewald's home
is, that's where we lived. Grady Webb was the postman and he had a little
old team of mules and his route was so long he would come by there at dark
and he had to go to the post office, then he lived over in the Webb
Settlement and he would have to go home. During that time in 1929 I got
married. I met the girl of my dreams I guess I couldn't live without her.
She was a pretty girl I tell you and we got married in 1929 during the
depression. We come to town to get married on the 23rd day of August but
there was something or other we didn't have so we left and come back on the
24th. We come back and went all over town looking for a preacher but they
was all gone so we had to go out to Judge Dean, he lived out on Relief
Street so we went out there and my mother was with me and we spent all day
trying to get married and finally got married a little before dark. That
was back in the Model T days you know, the Model T came along in 1907 and I
came along in 1908 and by 1909 they was in full production. Something
happened to our car, this car we got married in my daddy had bought that
brand new in 1926 for $650.00. we wound up in a garage down by the viaduct
now on Broadway. I don't know how that fellow got the part but he stayed
with it until he got it fixed. Then I had to go into Qulin and take my
mother home and they we had to take her daddy home and we got back about
2.00.
I tell you I had a wonderful wife, everybody loved her.
People just loved to talk to her. She died just a little over two years
ago. She liked just two days of dying on her birthday. She would have been
91 years old. There are so many things, I could talk all day I guess, I
have went through so many things myself, that the Good Lord has took me
through and took her through. In 1951 she had high blood pressure so bad
that no doctor in Poplar Bluff could bring it down. She would just vomit
every morning, she was so sick. They finally told me, you're going to have
to do something or she is going to be pushing up daisies. I took her to St.
Louis and left her with a high blood pressure specialist for about two
weeks and he couldn't bring it down. I thought well you're going to have to
do something or she is going to die so I made an appointment, they sent me
to St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis and I took her up there and the doctors
came in, three or four of them and said well we're going to tell you we
have never operated on a woman before. They had operated on men for this
problem but not a woman. They didn't know if we wanted to take the chance,
and I asked them well what's the chances. She had a two percent chance it
would cure her and five percent of patients live for at least five years
that was about it. That was in 1951 we had that done.
They went in on her back and cut all the synthetic nerves and in two weeks
they went in on this side and took the bloodstream off of her head and
heart and tied it into a big vein. It took awhile for the blood to get back
to her brain you know and for a long time she couldn't get up real quick.
For a long time they had her wrapped real tight so that blood didn't return
too quick. she would pass out. She made it all that time so the doctors
don't always know.
That was a miracle I have been through a lot of them. You remember Uncle
John VanEaton and Aunt Sallie; you remember the old farm down there south
of Qulin. My oldest son Teddy was born there, we lived in the north end of
that house. I made a crop for Uncle John, I had a big cotton crop, I was
about 25 years old, he had an old pair of mules, Red & Blue, and that one
lived to be real old. We lived there and it was so hot, we didn't have air
conditioning or fans or nothing like that except the fans they used to hand
out when you went to a funeral. My wife was pregnant with Teddy and it was
so hot, on the north side it was worse than where Mr. VanEaton was you
know. We would get out on the front porch and lay down you know to try and
get cool, it was worse for her you know. Mr. & Mrs. VanEaton, you know we
had a door between the houses, and Bonnie was just a little bugger, you
know she was just four years old, she was just a little kid and we had to
watch her, we would miss her and she would be sitting in there at their
table eating. They were just crazy about her, her mother didn't want her
going over there and bothering them but they liked that. My wife put a
latch on the door up near the top, but Bonnie would get a chair and climb
up and undo that latch.
I made a crop there, I had cotton up on the north forty and I would chop
that cotton, those quarter mile rows you know I would chop cotton all day
and come home and work in the garden until dark, I just worked myself down,
I followed the hay balers baling hay and I guess I got an ulcer and I went
to the doctor and he said he thought that was causing all my problems and
he wanted to take my appendix out, he thought that would cure it. Doc, I
ain't got no money to be operated on, and he said don't worry about that,
I'll operate on you and take your appendix out and when you get well you
can pay me. Doctors just don't do that any more.
So they operated on me about one Saturday and boy I tell you I couldn't do
nothing, I couldn't take a drink of water until the next Thursday, I almost
went crazy.
It hurt so bad I liked to died. On a Thursday it quit hurting, I mean I
didn't have a hurt in the world, it was like something hovering around my
bed, I've heard of the death angels you know, Mother & Daddy come in and
they knew something had happened to me cause I wasn't active you know, so
they run me up to the doctors you know and they wanted to get me a shot and
I didn't want a shot, I said no I don't want a shot. I'm easy.
I have read the bible all my life you know, read it before I was married
and I could just see a vision into heaven and that is where I wanted to go,
I could see that stream of water it talks about in Revelations you know,
flowing from the throne of God. That's where I wanted to go, I didn't want
a shot but they give me a shot then and I come to.
I believe I had a vision into what Heaven is like, so they give me a shot
and I begin to hurt. Some little nurse came in, and I don't know why they
didn't think of that before, she went and got a bag of ice and laid it on
that and it helped a lot. I finally got over it.
That was another miracle in my life.
Another time I was cutting logs, me and my brother, over on the other side
of the Saint Francis River, my daddy was hauling, a storm come up in the
west, lightening and thundering, we walked around a big tree, I had a big
saw on my back and my brother had an ax, because we had been cutting logs
all day. I looked at the tree and I told him that looks hollow we better
not cut that one. We walked away about fifty feet and lightening struck
that thing and came down it right into the ground. If we would have started
sawing that log it would have killed us both.
I never did tell you about the bank robbery did I? You see we lived right
on the river almost, not very far off it anyway, the bank had been robbed
and we were working right on the river there me and my brothers, two or
three of us and my daddy, right on the river bank there by the Hargrove
bridge fixing the fence there, we had a place where we watered the mules
and we was working there. We saw a couple of horses come up that way twice
with riders up to the bridge but they didn't cross and the reason they
didn't cross is because one of the bank robbers was a neighbor that had
lived by us for years. He told us later the reason they didn't come up they
was afraid my daddy would recognize them. The third time they come up they
knew they were going to have to cross because it was getting late. The law
had gotten there by that time and hid in under the bridge. They come out
with their guns drawn and told them to stick em up, you know, and this
Rolly Nichols boy, he was one of them, he put his hands up but our
neighbor, Otis Brown, he played cowboy, he went down on the side of his
horse and tried to get away and they shot him. He was bleeding like a stuck
hog, after they shot him, they brought him across the river there to our
place and my daddy and my oldest brother took them to town. I know all
about that because I saw it. Now them two people had to serve time, there
was about two or three big shots around Qulin that was a part of that but
they didn't have to serve time. Tom Craft was one of them, and one of them
was a deputy sheriff.
NOTES: Submitted first to the Qulin Historical Society for publication in their monthly report
by: President Glen Sedrick
Dates: May and June 2010
Information given to Mary Hudson: Ralph Hargrove past the age of 100 at the time of this publication
Permission was given to use this article on this web site.
The VanEaton farm mentioned by Ralph located just south of Qulin: was owned by
John VanEaton and wife Sally - the farm remained in the family until the passing
of Sally's nephew in May 2002. Hubert Hall with wife Polly and family maintained
the farm from the 1950's until he passed from this life at the age of 94.
Before Hubert was another nephew Bernie Neil with wife Irene and family.
Before Bernie I do not know.
Uncle John VanEaton was along in the 90+ years upon his passing.
John's wife Sally was a sister to Estella "Neil" Hall the grandmother of both
Glen Sedrick: past QHS President, current Mayor of Qulin
Mary Agnes 'Ledbetter' Hudson: publisher of this web site.
This site created and maintained by Mary Hudson
Return to Qulin Missouri