Limbaugh Lands Inc.: Family farmland offers sentimental, shared history over 200-plus years

Limbaugh is a common name in Southeast Missouri. Specifically in Cape Girardeau and Bollinger counties. And that name is attached to a tract of land in Bollinger County that has been in the family for almost two centuries.

“Some parts of it have been in a member of the family since before the Civil War,” said Stephen Limbaugh Sr., a Cape Girardeau attorney.

The last documented transaction of property was 1858, though many believe the earliest farmers were there more than three decades before that.

“That’s the only date we can be sure of,” Limbaugh said. “But these had to be four other tracts (purchased) before then.”

The family came from North Carolina, and they came either right before or at the turn of the century, 1800.

George Frederick Bollinger, he was first real settler. He brought a group with him. They traveled by wagon from North Carolina.

Frederich Limbach (previous spelling of the family name) was naturalized as a citizen in September 1767.

One of his descendants was George Frederick Bollinger.

“They crossed the (Mississippi) River in 1800 by ferry through Chester, from Illinois to Missouri (on their way) to Bollinger County.”

In addition to Bollinger, there were other common names now familiar to many in Bollinger County.

"I know there were some Statlers in that crowd, some Penrods, several other families the names are familiar around here,” Limbaugh said. “George Frederick Bollinger had already settled here in Bollinger County, and he thought it was a great place.”

There were abundant natural resources -- water, springs, farmland.

“The little (Whitewater) River there was a real nice place they thought,” he said. “It had a lot of nice springs. The land appeared to be fertile. It isn’t, it’s rocky.”

Limbaugh said he isn’t entirely sure how the family came to acquire the land.

“I’m not quite sure how he acquired it. At that time, the land was going back and forth between the French and Spanish. The Spanish owned it up until 1800, when it was sold to the French and then in 1803 (Thomas) Jefferson bought it at 3 cents an acre."

Jefferson would later send a group, called the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to explore the land, primary getting to the source of the Missouri River, and seek out a northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean.

This all occurred well before Missouri was a state. There were settlements and towns here and there. Ste. Genevieve was pretty well inhabited, and St. Louis was, too. Missouri didn’t become a state until 1821.

Bollinger County as it exists today was not part of a state, and it likely was part of the Upper Louisiana Territory, with the governing area of the land being in Ste. Genevieve.

Limbaugh was not sure how they got horses and livestock into the community. They were useful in working the land.

“In this area, they must have acquired the livestock and horses from somebody there that already had them,” he said. “You’ve got to have animals.”

Initially, Limbaugh said early ancestors farmed the land.

“They homesteaded it, but they had to farm to have a livelihood,” he said. “I’m not sure if they raised small grains -- wheat, rye, barley, back then, I don’t know when that came in, but corn principally, and tobacco, which was further down in Kentucky and Tennessee.”

To make the homesteading process profitable, additional land was purchased to farm.

“They just needed more land to survive, so they kept acquiring it,” Limbaugh said. “Ultimately, the whole thing was acquired by Joseph Limbaugh, and he had the immediate family that I’m familiar with, my dad (Rush H. Limbaugh, Senior) and his siblings.”

It was a challenging, difficult life. according to Limbaugh.

“Even then, when they had the whole thing, they struggled to live. This is the late 1800s. It was hard," he noted.

Asked if people now in the 21st have a proper understanding or concept of life in the late 1800s, Limbaugh promptly responded “none whatsoever".

Seeking independence and living on their own was part of the pull of leaving what they knew from previous places.

“The whole reason for the migration West, people just wanted to be independent and live on their own, and not be disturbed,” Limbaugh said. “That’s what we’ve always wanted here, and no we don’t have it. Even back in the middle 1930s, I worked for one of my uncles (Roscoe Limbaugh). He and two of the other brothers were still farming. Everything was done then with horses and mules. No mechanized equipment. Tractors didn’t came in until after the war, about 1945. I tell ya, it was a hard life. You got up at sunrises, sometimes before. At that time, they did have electricity but no water. All wells or a cistern. Water come down from the roof and into a cistern. They’d drink it, not very sanitized. People died of tuberculosis. They made most of their food mostly from raw materials, flour, sugar and salt…There was no plumbing. (It was) outdoor johns."

Families tended to be much larger in those days. Limbaugh’s father was the youngest of seven siblings.

“One person couldn’t do it,” Limbaugh said, referring to all of the work on the farm. “Some of these people had 10 kids.”

Limbaugh’s father, Rush H. Limbaugh, was born in 1891. There were three girls and four boys in the family. Two of the girls passed away at age 21 from tuberculosis.

Stephen Limbaugh Sr. only farmed as a youngster on the property in the 1940s. From Stephen’s perspective, his father spoke highly of his brothers that kept working at the farm.

“He’s always been very appreciative to his brothers. They worked and he went to school. The thing that made it so bad, my grandfather, my dad’s father, died at age 47, leaving all those kids. My grandmother, and the kids, ran the show. The oldest son, his name was Arthur, when the dad died he was 18."

The farm now, referred to legally as Limbaugh Land Inc., is approximately 458 acres. While much of it is farmland, some of it is timber.

“I’m not exactly sure how much was timber and how much was (farm) land, and it was hilly,” Limbaugh said. “Farming hilly land is difficult. In the normal course of weather, the rain doesn’t stay as much on the hills as it does in the valley. You farmed in the valley much more profitably. They called it bottomland. If you had 40 acres, it could be that only 15 acres were bottomland.

Limbaugh, 96, remembers working on the farm in the 1930s. He is a 1945 graduate of Cape Central High School.

“I was 10 years old,” he said. “For two summers, I lived out there. I was used to the easy life here in the city. Back then it was hard.”

He recalls days spent helping from dawn until dusk, perhaps even later.

“You’d be out in the field all day,” he said. “When the sun went down you came in. We used to call it feeding in the dark. You’d bring the horses into the barn and you’d feed them. Generally, you’d feed them oats, and they loved it. The horses were easily to control than the mules. The mules were a little feisty.

“The horses, they were beasts of burden, they worked all day,” Limbaugh said. “They would roll in the dust. It was so interesting. We’d feed them (oats) and some hay, too.”

After the horses and mules were fed, they’d come inside for supper

It was often 8:30 or 9 p.m.

“You ate supper and then went to bed,” he recalls. “The ladies worked outside. They did most of the milking and cooking.

There were no washers. They washed by hand and hung it up on the clothes line.”

But back to that food, for a moment.

“It was plain food, but it was nourishing,” Limbaugh said. “At that time, they had big gardens. My uncle Roscoe, he’d get up before I did, sometimes it was barely daylight, and he’d be out working the vegetable garden before we went out to the field.”

Just what specifically were they growing back then?

“Everything,” he said. “Potatoes, lettuce, peas, beans, tomatoes, everything.”

If was something they needed at a store, then traveled to Sedgewickville, about two to three miles away. Typically, the items purchased there were salt, sugar and flour.

Limbaugh remembers using an electric milk separator. Whole milk was poured in, and the cream would rise to the top.

Electricity was available in certain locations, possibly arriving around 1935, but, as Limbaugh recalls “probably not too much before that.”

There was a two-lane, paved highway to get from Cape Girardeau County to the farm in Bollinger County.

“It was much (more) narrower than it is now,” said Limbaugh, referring to the roadway. Now, Highway 32, with wider shoulders provides the main transportation route east/west.

Roscoe Limbaugh acquired 220 acres and farmed that, according to Stephen Limbaugh.

“It’s not a money-making project,” he said. “It’s (just) making enough to keep it up.”

There is no home on the property, and that’s been the case since the 1950s.

For a time, Burette Limbaugh farmed the land.

The farm officially became a corporation, Limbaugh Lands Inc., in 1979.

Burette wound up with the home place in about 1927 and raised his five children there.

“Nobody (from the family) is working it now,” Limbaugh said. It’s been leased out for a couple decades.

In addition, a family cemetery is on the property. Limbaugh believes an estimate 60 people are buried there.

“Most of these people are buried out there, and we keep it up,” Limbaugh said.

The closest church to the property was in Sedgewickville.

“They didn’t always get to church,” he said. “It was tough to it. To get there, you’d go by horse or buggy, or wagon. Going to church, they always wanted to do it. It was a luxury because you got to see somebody. Church was really a social occasion.”

Limbaugh isn’t sure when they got phone service. It may have been close to when electricity arrived, or later.

“There were neighbors, too, that lived around this area,” he said. “Occasionally, you’d see one of the neighbors across the ridge farming.”

Help from those nearby wasn’t a luxury, it was more of a necessity, according to Limbaugh.

“The neighbors were extremely helpful as midwifery,” he said. “All the kids were born at home. The neighbors would come help the ladies.”

In terms of an occupation, “Farming is the only thing they knew how to do,” Limbaugh said.

“They were all literate, but few of them ever passed the high school years,” he said. “Another thing I remember that was really a bonanza at my uncle Roscoe’s home when I was out there was a piano. Music was a good thing. There was always somebody that could play the piano. How they learned, I’m not sure.

For a place that lies approximately 15 miles west of Jackson, there are times when living there could seem so remote, Limbaugh said.

“Going to town was a luxury,” he said. “Just to see people, talk and find out what was going on in the world.”

Postal service delivered to a mailbox on Highway 72.

“That was a big luxury too because they’d get a newspaper. In 1935, that’s one of the things my uncle did after supper (was read a newspaper). It was the only contact they had. Ultimately, I’m not sure when it was, they acquired a radio," Limbaugh noted.

Amidst all the struggles, early on, finding enough people to work the land and now, a lack of interest in family farming, Limbaugh Sr. was asked why keep Limbaugh Lands Inc. going?

“That’s really a good question,” Limbaugh said. “It’s getting more and more difficult. There are few others left, that knew that original group of people. It was very sentimental for us. It still is. In another 10 years there (probably) won’t be anybody around who knew those seven kids who lived on that farm. The settlement then will only be inherited then, not experienced.

A lake and pavilion have been added to the property, as well as a toilet.

A few of the family members go out there to fish and hunt, Limbaugh said.

“There are a lot of turkey and deer,” he said.

The family still holds reunions on the property.

“They bring all the young kids out. But before long, that interest probably is going to dissipate, I’m afraid. If it is, so be it,” Limbaugh said.