FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: FROM THE LEAD BELT TO THE FARM (PART 2)

Jean Bell Mosley's new autobiography, "For Most of the Century," is only available in serialized form in the Southeast Missourian. Return each week for her continuing story.

1910 - 1920

ARRIVAL

"Bells were ringing all over town when you were born," Mama was fond of telling me. I liked this and wasn't above repeating it to my little friends until I learned that Sept. 21, 1913, was a Sunday morning and church bells were calling the citizens to worship in the little town of Elvins, Mo.

Thus I began my journey through the century, or, as I like to describe it, my first stitch was added to the great, ever unrolling tapestry of time that began on that bright day of creation.

Elvins was known as a tough little town because of the hard life of the miners in the early days of mining in that area of Missouri known as the Lead Belt. Spending their working hours in the damp underground, picking out chunks of limestone that contained the precious lead ore, they were prone to "celebrate" after hours, gathering at the local saloons or livery stables where tempers sometimes flared and fights ensued.

I knew nothing of this rough and tumble life, have no memories of my life in Elvins at all, since my parents, two older sisters and paternal grandparents moved about 10 miles southeastward to a farm near the headwaters of the St. Francis River before my memory faculties began to develop.

My memories of Elvins resulted from later visits there, most often with Mama, in a horse-drawn buggy. She would take pounds of molded butter and dozens of crated eggs to Langdon's Store and trade them for what groceries we had to buy such as coffee, sugar, flour, cornmeal -- things we couldn't raise or manufacture on the farm.

Sometimes, after these trade transactions, she would take me by the hand to cross the "dangerous" street, alive with other horse or mule drawn wagons and buggies and men on horseback, to Woods' Drugstore.

The drugstore odor was a distillation of rose or violet talcum powder, soaps, cough syrups and numerous other items to be found in such early emporiums. Past all these things we would go, I in my plain gingham dress and Buster Brown shoes, she in her Indianhead linen and leather slippers, all the way to the back where the ice cream tables and chairs were, the kind with curly metal legs and backs.

We did not have to wait long until a waiter came. Then Mama, with a demeanor that it was an everyday occurrence would say, "Two orange ice cream sodas, please."

I tried to sit still and appear as calm as Mama, but inside I would be quivering with excitement. Two ice cream sodas!

Other points of interest in the Elvins that I knew were Fatty Klein's Shoe Shop, Tlapke's Meat Market, Sizemore's Barber Shop and the train depot. The little, approximately six by eight feet, concrete jail with tiny high-up windows was behind the depot and was not even to be looked at should we have to pass by. Bad people were in there, they said. I did not know who or what bad people were.

I had been christened at an early age in the Elvins Methodist Episcopal Church South, but, naturally, have no memory of that either since such sacrament and ceremony is a vow of the parents to raise the infant child in a Christian manner.

Before moving to the farm, Grandpa and Grandma Bell and those of their children still at home had lived in Leadwood and Bonne Terre, Missouri, two other mining towns of the Lead Belt. Because of the Bell family's leading role in the mining operations, not only Grandpa but Uncle Frank Bell, streets in both of these towns were named Bell Street in their honor.

Other towns in this Lead Belt area, all bunched together, were Flat River, Deslodge, Rivermines, St. Francois, Esther, Cantwell and Leadington. Doe Run, once the headquarters for the St. Joe Lead Company, was a bit geographically detached, about 10 miles southeast, as was Farmington, the county seat of St. Francois County. Farmington was never considered a mining town. There were no shafts there leading to the underground mines as there were in the other "bunched-up" towns. Now, in this last decade, four of these towns, Flat River, Elvis, Esther and Rivermines, have consolidated and are known by one name, Park Hills.

Quoting from Robert Sidney Douglass' History of Southeast Missouri, published in 1912, Stephen Bell "has been a resident of Missouri for fully 30 years, and his entire active career has been one of close identification with the mining industry. For a number of years past he has been captain of the mines of the Federal Lead Company at Elvins, St. Francois County, and he is well known in connection with this line of industry in Missouri, where his long experience in practical and executive capacities has made him an authority in his chosen vocation, the while he has so ordered his course as to retain the unqualified confidence and regard of his fellow men.

"He and his wife maintain their home at Elvins, and of their seven children, four sons and one daughter are living. Stephen Bell is a staunch supporter of the principles for which the Republican party stands sponsor, is affiliated with the Ancient Order of United Workmen, and his wife holds membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The Bell family was founded in Virginia in an early day and is of staunch Scotch lineage."

There may have been several reasons why the move was made to the farm in 1915. Grandpa was 58 years old and maybe wanted more of a touch of rural life for his remaining years. There was growing discontent among the miners which finally led to riots in 1917.

Dad and George Maxton operated a livery stable and blacksmith shop at Elvins. A livery stable was a "hotel" for horses which, for one reason or another, needed stabling overnight or even longer. Also, surreys, buggies and other wheeled conveyances, plus horses, could be rented as one would rent a car these days.

The blacksmith part of the business was for making horseshoes and fitting them to the hooves of horses or mules that needed to be shod. Wagon and buggy wheels and other parts were also made or repaired.

Word filtered in from the "outside world" that this Henry Ford was making a success of that contraption Grandpa and Grandma had ridden in at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, a conveyance that did not need horses to pull it.

"Handwriting" on the livery stable and blacksmith shop walls was clearly visible in the minds of Grandpa and Dad.

Too, whisperings of war overseas became louder and louder. Maybe a farm in the St. Francis River bottom, surrounded by thickly forested hills would be a safe haven away from the vagaries and changing times and a better place to raise three little girls. In the aforementioned History of Southeast Missouri, Elvins was described as a town with a population of 2071 which depended on the mines and railroad traffic. Two railroad lines ran through the town, the Illinois Southern and the Mississippi River and Bonne Terre, called M.R. & B.T. for short, which some said stood for Muddy Roads and Bad Tracks.

The Bank of Elvins, so the history says, was organized in 1900 with a capital stock of $15,000. By 1915 perhaps that capital had grown. Anyway, Grandpa, et al., borrowed part of that capital to supplement his and Dad's savings to buy the farm.

The move was made. Dad, Mama, Lucille and I went first in 1915. Grandpa, Grandma and Lillian followed in 1916. Lillian was in school by this time and stayed on in Elvins with Grandpa and Grandma to finish her second grade there.

My earliest memory of the farmstead was of a colored rubber ball being discovered as a worn back porch floor was being removed from the farmhouse. As dad pried the worn boards loose, there was this colorful ball, evidently lost by some other child many years ago. The ball was tossed to me and I thought it the prettiest thing I'd ever seen, and when dropped, it bounced! Scared me.

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.