Hocking County Historical and Genealogical Society and Museum

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                            WELCOME

  To our web site, we do update, so please come back!        

            CORONAVIRUS19

   THE BOARD HAS VOTED TO KEEP THE            MUSEUM CLOSED THIS YEAR

                         FREE Admission

Admission and parking are FREE and our campus is handicapped accessible.

                      Group/bus tours are welcome!

Please call to schedule a time for your private tour.

 We encourage people living in our community and guests visiting the beautiful Hocking Hills to come and see our historically interesting displays that preserve our county's fascinating past. 

                        Phone 1-740-385-6026

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           LELAND LAVON CONNER

                 5/9/30 - 11/16/07

 WITH THE EXHIBIT OF HIS ARTIFACTS

 AT THE MUSEUM, WE WILL FOR             SEVERAL WEEK ,HAVE HIS STORIES, POEMS, RESEARCH AND TALES. 

          (on Special Project page)

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THE ROBERT STONE FARM
Alwilda Stone Brimner is shown with her father, Robert Stone in front of the Hocking County farmhouse where Edith Brimner Gordon was born on Jan. 22, 1896. (Alwilda was Edith’s mother.) The house built with materials available on the property at the farm, was constructed by Stone and is still in use today

              Edith Brimner
          Logan Daily News January 20, 1996
          Celebrating 100 years

(EDITOR’S NOTE—How easy is it for us to reminisce about events that happened in the last 10 or 20 years. But can you imagine recalling experiences of 70 or 80 years ago? Well, that’s what Edith Brimner Gordon does. The spry senior citizen will celebrate her 100th birthday on Monday. Still living independently, she enjoys visiting with her extended family, as well as watching the activities of the city from her kitchen windows, sitting in her favorite chair. She (and her family) share with us bits and pieces of her life as a native of Hocking County.


Edith Brimner Gordon was born Jan. 22, 1896, in a farmhouse located in southern Hocking County. Her folks, Robert, and Mary Catherine Alwilda Stone Brimner, were also the parents of two other children, Ola and Arlie. All three children were born in the Robert Stone House, which was built in the late 1850’s by Stone, construction mostly from materials from his own properties.
The house still stands today in fairly good condition, on a solid foundation, still owned by the Stone heirs, and still providing shelter to a good family.
Robert, Alwilda and family lived there until about 1904 when they acquired ownership of the Brimner family farm.
From that date on, the family made their home in a large two-story frame home built in 1898-99 by James B. Brimner. Old records indicate the total cash outlay for construction of the house was $1,200. That residence, too, still stands in good condition, still owned by the Brimner family.
Edith says her family practically lived at both houses, with her Mama running back and forth constantly caring for Papa’s elderly parents as well as for her own father.
Farming was the way of life for most Hocking countians in that day and Edith recalls an enjoyable life busily engaged in helping with the chores of the farm life: Cooking, baking, churning, tending stock (cattle, horses, pigs, sheep), poultry (chickens, geese, turkeys, and ducks), raising grain (corn, wheat, buckwheat, oats), butchering, (making sausage, curing and canning beef), cleaning house, sewing and labor to no end.
Families worked the whole weeklong, then went to town by horse and buggy on Saturday to get the necessities unavailable from the farm—and to sell butter and eggs as well as a chicken or two.
Sundays then were the “Sabbath,” - for attendance at church, casual socializing, and a truly needed “day of rest.”
The railroads had just taken over the canal boat commerce. The automobile was becoming the common man’s transportation and wagon roads were just becoming paved in town. Papa (Robert C. Brimner) still ran a good blacksmith shop in Union Furnace, just over the hill five miles (where also, a good-sized brick plant was turning out those street paving bricks).
The search for oil to maintain the automobile engine brought the “wildcat drillers” to Honey Fork Road. The Brimner and the Stone farms had some of the first wells drilled in that area. The additional income, though meager, brought some relief to the farming toil, and Robert C. Brimner bought an early Model T Ford. This opened many vistas and led to greatly expanded travel to visit friends and relatives, and to see the marvels of the extended world—even the Ohio River! Edith gained knowledge and experience from these family travels to bolster her chances later in entering the teaching profession.
After completing the eighth grades of rural schooling at Aurora school (about 11/2 miles north of the Brimner farm), Edith attended summer sessions at Ohio University in Athens to qualify for a career in teaching.
In the alternate fall-winter-spring season, Edith taught at various near-home 0ne-room schools, all eight grades, eight-month sessions at Goat Run, Olive Branch, Aurora, Laurel Ridge, and Ilesboro. Years later, she was still receiving seasonal greeting cards from several of her pupils of those years. Teachers back then served also as administrator, as well as custodian of the building, fire tender, school nurse, counselor, librarian, disciplinarian, music director, truant officer, transportation, overseer, etc. “Never did earn more than one hundred dollars a month,” During most of these years she continued to “board” at home, also continuing to assist Mama with the demands of the farm …. in her spare time.
etc. “Never did earn more than one hundred dollars a month.” During most of these years she continued to “board” at home, also continuing to assist Mama with the demands of the farm …. in her spare time.
As the incomes of the family grew, social gatherings at the Brimner household became a frequent event. Robert Brimner delighted in inviting the neighbors to come by to help consume five-gallon buckets of ice cream, or watermelons in season and sometimes oyster soup supper. Edith says: “Papa just liked crowds.” And, in an era without radio, television and telephone, these gatherings were very memorable occasions for all present. Of course, a most memorable finale was the always-present bucket of chocolate mound candies from Papa’s cupboard.
The stresses of teaching forced and early retirement for Edith, and she spent several months with friends in Akron where her medical condition was improved by “radio treatments.” She did not return to teaching, however, but continued to help on the home farm. Another farmer, Samuel F. Gordon, and Edith found attraction for each other, and very soon Sam became a regular and constant visitor on Honey Fork Road. Upon the death of Sam’s parents, Sam and Edith married (April 17, 1935) and set up housekeeping on the Gordon Farm, where they continued the farming pursuit for the next twenty years. In addition to frequent visits back on Honey Fork, visitations with Arlie’s family at the home he built in Logan with Louisa Mae ‘Arick’ Brimner, an occasional venture to Indiana, they became very active in the St. John’s Lutheran Church in Pleasant Valley, near their farm. Church, Grange, family reunions, and social clubs were their avocation. They were also instrumental in forming the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery Association for the private care and preservation of the burial grounds of Edith’s grandparents, her mother, sister, and numerous others of the Stone family.
In 1954, Sam’s health required them to give up
the strenuous life. The farm was sold, with regret, and the couple purchased a large two-story home in Logan “for the duration” - where Edith still makes her home.
For the next 27 years, Sam and Edith maintained the home together, constantly increasing their flower beds in quantity and color—always eager to “dig a set” or “cut a sprout” for all visitors for their own planting. They also managed several rental dwellings in Logan. The family reunions (Brimner, Stone, and Davis) are still considered the special events of the year to reminisce, and to keep up with family developments.
Of course, age brings its infirmities, and Edith’s eyesight failed, to the point she was clinically blind for several years before Sam’s death (in 1981, at age 89). Under these circumstances she felt cataract surgery, long recommended, was now a necessity. So, she did concede to surgery—on one eye only, saving the other for her old age! The process was uncomplicated, mission accomplished and resulted in 20/20 vision in that right eye—which is still close to her acuity of today.
Her quick wit and amazing long-term memory for specific detail continues to astound—like her recollection of lightning striking the right back leg of her grandpa’s desk in the living room of the Stone house, when she was a child—the split still remains in evidence. She remembers the broken top of the cork in the bottom on their old butter churn, the cork that got dislodged and let buttermilk spew all over Lena Petty, a young visiting cousin, when they were about ten. “Had to wash all of her clothes, head to foot.” She also remembers who it was that returned her horse (Arlie’s Wildfire) to her when it slipped in snow and she fell off on her way to Ilesboro School.
She can recall many other events of the distant, and of the more recent past, all undeniable evidence of a remarkably interesting 100 years well spent—makes us wonder what is in store for all of us during the next 100.

    
                       

      

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   Six buildings of historic displays showcase the circa 1898 Schempp House, the Lutz Steam Car, original pioneer wagon of the Stiers Family & original Hocking Valley Railroad Telegraph Office, where you can test your Morse Code knowledge.

     Sit in early 1900's desks & write on chalkboards in the recreated 1912 School House and shuck corn on corn sheller's in the Carriage House display of agricultural items   

    View numerous displays of Hocking History including: a medical office, military uniforms & equipment, toys, coal mining, local clay & brick industry, Hocking Canal & bridge history, an example of a print shop, mastodon teeth & Indian artifacts.

     A Timeline Exhibit of Logan and Hocking County features a century of the county's history condensed into four panels is also on display. The timeline includes Native Americans, the first settlers (1798), the Civil War, the Hocking Valley Railway and the 1916 Logan Centennial, ending in 1917, when America joined the war.