Antrim, Ohio Merediths

 

Ernest Meredith visiting Antrim, Ohio.  George Meredith built this house in 1848.  Land grant from President Monroe.  At the time of this visit, the owners were George & Frances Meredith.

 

 

Present buildings on the Thomas Meredith old farm.  House built in 1897.

 

 

Elizabeth Meredith, wife of George Meredith buried at Antrim, Ohio.

 

 

George Meredith headstone in Antrim, Ohio cemetery.

 

 

Samuel Meredith monument, Pleasant Mount, PA.  He was the first treasurer of the U.S.

 

 

 Washington Turnpike Tavern, Route 40, just north of Fort Necessity and near General Braddock's grave.  A portion of Braddocks Road built in French & Indian War.  Washington spent a lot of time at this tavern.

 

Sarah Meredith Rea and husband.  She was the daughter of Thomas Meredith.  Buried in Rehoboth Baptist Church yard, Greenville, PA

 

 

Meredith Ave. on Gettysburg Battlefield along which Brigadier General Solomon Meredith fought during the 3 days of battle at Gettysburg.

 

 

Stone fence built on land once owned by Samuel Meredith.

 

 

Scene of Thomas Meredith home 1790.  Revolutionary War soldier 1809.  Cabin was located in depression of land marked with an X, near Limestone, PA

Chicago Daily Drovers Journal Article about Ernest L. Meredith

March 10, 1948

Cows-Hogs Make Fine Combination
Illinois Farmer Finds Durocs and Milking Shorthorns Profitable

Some people like for their cattle to be black - some prefer red ones with white markings - some will have nothing to do with bovine critters unless they are red, white or roan - and then there are some who say that the red, white and roan is all right, but in addition they must be of a milking strain.

Reference, of course, is made to milking Shorthorns, and the man who picked this breed of cattle to work with is Ernest L. Meredith, in DeWitt County, IL.  And he has some good reasons to like his choice breed besides the color.

It was back in the bleak days of 1930 and the still tougher times immediately following through the depression that Mr. and Mrs. Meredith decided to buy the 207 acres they now live on.  It was a farm and that was about all that could be said about the place that was complimentary.

A Run Down Farm
The house was an old rambling shack - there was a crib and a rackety cow shed - no fences to keep the livestock out of the crops - and worse than all of these handicaps was the depleted soil that was only good for about 25 or 30 bushels of corn per acre.

In the spring of 1933 the Merediths moved onto their farm and started to work in earnest to see what they could do to make the soil more productive and at the same time make a living for  two boys, Glenn and Robert, Mariam, who is 10 now, came along a few years later.

In 1935 the Merediths really started in the milking shorthorn business in a big way and  built up a herd that totaled as much as 150 head of purebreds at a time.  It fluctuated quite a bit in numbers because Ernest Meredith is a trader and readily admits it!  He does a lot of buying and selling - at one time took all of the offspring from several Minnesota herds and has bought cattle in Canada.  In fact, he has been known to buy a load of breeding stock and end up by selling it before he reached home!

As a result of all this trading, he has become somewhat of a pedigree expert and can tell you what he thinks of an animal's ancestors without going to a reference book to check them.

$200 Per Stanchion
The dairy barn that will hold 35 cows was built in 1938 and Mr. Meredith says that for the past 10 years every stanchion in the barn has returned him a net income of $100 in milk and another $100 in purebred calves to sell, or a total of $200 per stanchion.

In addition to the large dairy barn, there is a modern bull barn that will hold four bulls and it has pens 40 by 20 feet in front of each bull's stall so that they can exercise without endangering the life of a man.

Show and sale window of the farm is the small pasture that runs along the main highway past the farm.  People in need of bulls are apt to see a calf they like and stop to ask about it.  Usually they end up by taking a bull calf home with them!

300 Durocs a Year
Red seems to be a favorite color with the Merediths, for purebred Durocs now play an important part in the operation of the home farm and an additional 240 acres over in McLean County.  About 300 pigs are farrowed a year.  We should say during the year, for they are scattered  over the 12 months and get part of the credit along with the cattle for helping pay off the mortgage.

Present plans call for a feeding unit on the 240 acre farm and about half of the pig crop farrowed on the home farm will be fed out on this McLean county farm as well as about 50 head of calves per year.

Mr. Meredith helped organize the Central Illinois Milking Shorthorn association five years ago and it has grown from the 16 original charter members to a total of 75 today.  Seventeen counties are represented and the organization has done much to promote the breed and aid in the sale of breeding stock owned by the members.

Ernest L. Meredith newspaper article

article in Bloomington Pantagraph, December 18, 1947

60 Dual Shorthorn Breeders Dine Here
Report Demand for Good Cows Exceeds Supply

Sixty members of the Central Illinois Milking Shorthorn Breeders Association held their annual meeting and banquet Wednesday at the Illinois Hotel, plans for cattle sales there bringing many reports of a shortage of the dual purpose cattle compared to the big demand.

Ernest L. Meredith of Farmer City, president, reported the association sale at the Normal University Farm on Dec. 9 resulted in a total of $14,255 received for 40 head sold, and sales expense amounted to only 5.14 percent of the total.

He praised the association for its efforts to provide quality cattle for the sales, and to maintain their sales free of by-bidding, which he said is common in many such sales - breeders bidding high values on their own cattle for advertising purposes.

Mr. Meredith reported 50 Milking Shorthorn herds in Central Illinois are now enrolled in regular testing for production in dairy herd improvement associations.  Many of them are in the Central Illinois DHIA, tested by Darrell Slater of Chenoa, who has resigned as tester and will be succeeded in January by Cletus Volk of Minonk.

One action by the association was to accept associate membership from Milking Shorthorn breeders outside the 17 counties in their Central Illinois district.


A total of 72 members was reported in the Central Illinois association, an increase of 15 for the past year.

Ernest L. Meredith Newspaper Article

This was an article in the Farmer City newspaper dated April 1952

Farming and cattle raising have always been of chief interest to Ernest L. Meredith and it was to become engaged in farming that he came to the Farmer City vicinity in May 1922 to accept employment with Frank Houser receiving a wage of $26 per month.  In July he was offered $28 a month on a farm near Downs and went there to do farm work.

His original home was in Richland county where he was one of three sons and three daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Meredith.  He attended grade schools near Noble; went to the Noble high school a year; the high school at Olney a year and a half and completed his high school education and received his diploma from Deland High school in 1924.

In 1923 his parents moved to the Ed England farm near Deland.

In 1925 he rented a 280 acre farm near Mansfield and assumed the equipment from J. O. Bateman.  He farmed this for a year.

In 1926 he assisted with the farming of the "Doc" C.E. Judy farm near Bethel, going from this in 1927 to what was then known as the Fred Gould farm, now owned and operated by Robert Bragg.  He rented this place and remained there until 1933.

While residing here he married Ethel Beazly of Mansfield and the couple went to housekeeping on this place.

In March 1933 he moved to the Smith Fuller place which he bought from the Federal Land Bank.  He did extensive remodeling to this place and in 1936 bought the 120 acres across the road and his parents moved here.

The Merediths owned this place four years then sold this and bought land in Minnesota.  He raised milking shorthorn cattle and was engaged in trading cattle during the five years he owned this farm.

He was chief organizer and first president of the Central Illinois Milking Shorthorn Breeders Association and served in this capacity until 1950 when he resigned to go into other business.  This association includes 17 counties in Central Illinois.  He was likewise honored as the group delegate to the national convention.

During his presidency two purebred shorthorn sales were held here; the Central which he supervised alone brought over 100 breeders to Farmer City at which time a banquet was served at the Country Club; at the other sale he and Verne Zeiders sold surplus cattle stock.

In the fall of 1946 the Merediths bought three acres of the Herrick estate land at the intersection of Routes 150 and 54 and erected the attractive restaurant known as "the Elms" on this spot and a dairy building nearby.

A year later he traded the restaurant and dairy for land in McLean County.  Their son, Glenn who married the former Margaret Burge....
(I need to find the rest of this article)

James and Annie Beazly Family

by Ethel Beazly Meredith, June 1980

My parents were born in County Cork, Ireland.  This was in the south of Ireland, about 50 miles from the coast where I think the Lusitania ship was sunk at the beginning of World War I.

They were married in Ireland in August 3, 1892 (?).  Mother, Dad and I went back to Ireland in December 1907 to see their families.  Mother's father and mother were still living at the time.

The summer of 1907 we built a new two story house.  While it was being built we lived in the garage, about the size of a single garage.  The boys had their springs and mattresses on the joists across the top of the buggy shed.  All the other beds were on the floor along with a place to eat and cook.  the house was built on the same ground as the old one.  There was an old dug well included in the basement of the new house.  Kept food hung in the well to keep it cool until we had electricity for a refrigerator.

There were soft maple trees planted around the east and south side of the yard.  He planted evergreens on the north side but they all died.  They planted many fruit trees.  Always had fruit to east.  Before the days of glass jars they dried fruit on top of the bay windows.  Dried apples an peaches were our winter fruit.  While in Ireland he grafted a rose onto a currant bush and produced a blue rose.

My father had sold his family farm before he came to America.  The house the Webb family lived in was solid stone.  There were fire places in many of the rooms, even upstairs.  The barn was attached to the house.  They must have milked a good many cows, to a small child they had a churn that in my eyes was more than a 10 gallon.  There was a big garden, with patches of berries and grass in-between.  This is where the clothes line was.  Mother looked like her mother except the way she combed her hair.  Ernest says I looked like my mother.

He never saw her mother, and only one sister, Aunt Janie Moore and Uncle Willie.  That is another story of problems when they were forced to leave Ireland with the revolution in 1922.

The Beazly family can trace to a Lord Beazly in the house of Lords in England.  At the time of William the Conqueror this land that had belonged to James Beazly ancestors had been given to them when he was in the House of Lords.

Father was the only son of Geoffry Beazly.  He had two sisters that were married to Batemans.  Their descendants are mostly living in Canada.

To the Decendents of Robert Leroy Meredith and Laura Guyot Meredith

I hope and intend to pass along to you while my memory is pretty good the characteristics of my parents and Robert C. Meredith, my grandfather.  He was raised in the vicinity of Antrim, Ohio.  His father George Meredith and Elizabeth Bain Meredith had 13 children.  President Monroe gave the 160 acres near Antrim to George's father, Thomas Meredith, a Revolutionary War soldier, land grant made to all these soldiers.

The land was very rough and poor, but they raised their family there.  George and his wife bought the first piano that was sold west of the Appalachian Mountains.  Their children were musically inclined and taught singing by rote, that is by singing it over and over without printed music.

When George died he gave the land to the 2 oldest sons.  The family scattered, one went west to Kansas, two to Illinois and one to Wisconsin.  Robert C. came to Illinois and married Sara Wiley in 1851, she died in 1866.  He then married Louisa Gray and to this union were born 5 children.  The first three died in infancy and the last two, Lily and Robert L. lived after Robert C. died and was buried in Judsonia, Arkansas.

Louisa Gray Meredith brought the children back to Illinois near Noble, IL, where Lily received enough education to teach school.  She married Odin Taylor and they had two sons, Marion and Kenneth, both became medical doctors.

Robert L. married Laura Guyot, her parents were of German decent.  Their parents were immigrants from Alsas Lorraine.  Her father was Adam Guyot.  He bought a farm near Noble, IL.  He was also a blacksmith.  He and Robert C. Meredith, who was a woodworker joined forces and built wagons.  Meredith did the woodwork and Guyot the iron work.

Louisa Guyot, mother of Laura Meredith was a Stroup.  She was a small thin woman, as I remember.  She was a good manager and knew how to handle money.  I was teenager when she died.  Her grandsons were pallbearers.  My first experience and it was the custom for the family to fill in the grave.  The grave was dug b y friends and neighbors.  She and her husband were both buried in Greenhill Cemetery, Decker Township, about 1 1/2 miles east of Freedom Church where they all went to church, both families.  Louisa and Adam Guyot had 10 children, those that survived were James, William, Charley, to manhood.  Two daughters, Nellie who married William Martin and Laura who married Robert L. Meredith.

The Robert Merediths had 7 children.  The first was Nesley who died at birth, Ernest, Caryl, Louisa, Dorthy, Eleanor, and Lester.  The Meredith owned 120 acres about 2 miles south of Noble, where they lived till March 1923.  Robert Meredith was a farmer, raised hogs, chickens, turkeys, and milked cows.  As a side line he was an auctioneer.  He and his brother-in-law were on the committee to build a new church.

Adam Guyot was a very active church member.  At one time the Seventh Day Adventist church and the Freedom church held a debate as to whether Saturday or Sunday should be the day of worship.  Adam entered into the debate using his German language Bible.

An attempt was made by the people of Noble vicinity to establish a 4 year high school, but it failed to carry.  I, being the oldest went to Olney, 9 miles... of Noble and worked for my board in a dry goods and Ladies furnishings store.

My father and mother decided that all of their children could not go that far to school and they wanted them to have a high school education.  By this time Rev. J. T. Brooks a former preacher at Freedom went to Bethel Church, South of Farmer City, he made contact with Edward England, who owned several farms in the area.  He gave Robert a year round job on one of his farms and the family moved there to the Bethel neighborhood in March 1923.

James and Annie Beazly Family

by Ernest L. Meredith
June 20, 1980

To the descendants of James and Annie Webb Beazly, Mansfield Illinois:

I met these people in March 1925, when my Father and Mother rented a 240 acre farm near the Beazly farm.  I am writing this so that you may know something about the people and some characteristics that may show up in your relatives.

Mr. Beazly was in rather poor health at that time having had a severe accident with a corn elevator when his forefinger became caught in the hopper chain and amputated it.  He was a rather short man of average build, somewhat dark complexion.  Mrs. Beazly was larger and taller than her husband.  She was 20 years younger than he.

Mr. Beazly immigrated from Irelandia in 1890, to Mansfield where his sister, Minnie Howe (Mary Elizabeth) lived.  He worked as a stone mason and carpenter for about a year, and  bought an 80 acre farm 1/2 mile west of Mansfield.  He returned to Ireland and married Annie Webb and came to their farm in Mansfield in August 1892.

To this union five children were born.  Lizzie May, Mary Georgina, Geoffry, Percy Webb, and Ethel Louise.  May who was much like her mother never married.  Georgina who never married was slender and dark complexion and smaller than May.  Geoffry was large and like his mother.  Percy resembled his father.

Mr. Beazly was quiet and not easy to get acquainted with.  Mrs. Beazly was the opposite.  She met people easily and was very generous in nature.  She helped the local doctor, Dr. Young, deliver babies and helped him whenever there was need in the neighborhood.  She was a good organizer and manager.  These people were thrifty and hard working.

Mr. Beazly was inventive.  He designed and  built a horse drawn potato planter, also a horse drawn dump wagon that he used to haul cow and horse manure from town to his farm and dump it in piles, which he would later spread by hand.  He raised potatoes to sell and hauled them to Farmer City, to the father of the present Jesse Hammer, hauled by horse and wagon.

In 1907 he built the new house, one now standing on the original 80 acres.  Then he purchased the 80 just across the road.  Then in about 1924 he purchased the 80 acres 2 miles west of the home place and south, known as the Goodal place, now owned by the Percy Beazly family.  The 80 acres next to Mansfield was known as General Mansfield Farm.

His sister and husband, Minnie and Joe Howe, owned a 200 acre farm west of the Beazly farm, one mile (now owned by Dean and James Beazly) west which Geoffry and Percy rented at the time I met them.

The Beazly's came to US to get away from the Catholics and Protestants fighting in Ireland.  The church at Mansfield where they belonged was known then as Methodist Episcopal.  The family were very active in church work.  Mrs. Beazly was on many committees through the years and was the right hand with the pastor, whoever he was.

Mrs. Beazly could make a dollar go farther than any one I ever knew.  She saw to it that her family was well fed, clothed, and used their abilities to their best advantage.  Georgina and Ethel both became teachers and Ethel graduated from two year course and Georgina got her Bachelors degree from Normal and later her Masters Degree from University of Illinois.  She had a  brilliant mind and a lot of drive and ambition.  She never was in good health.  After Ethel's graduation we were married June 23, 1927.

Percy married Eleanor Randall.  To this union were born 3 boys and 1 girl.  Geoffry married Laura Bell.  She was a former missionary to India.  She passed away.  To this union were born Samuel and Brenton.  He later married a widow, Irene Lawson, they had no children.

When I met the Beazly's the economy was just recovering from World War I and the depression of 1920.  Mrs. Beazly had discovered that raising chickens and selling eggs was a pretty good way to get some money.  She had the boys build two brooder houses that would hold 200 baby chicks, and a large laying house where they kept upwards of 200 layers.  Eggs were cheap but you could trade them for groceries.  Each farmer milked a few cows and raised some pigs. About this time there came into being egg and cream buying stations.  They shipped cases of eggs to Chicago and 5 or 10 gallon cans of cream.  There was a train that made a daily trip into Chicago, called a local.  Eggs were 10 to 25 cents per dozen.  Every one had a cream separator.  Cream was worth $3.00 to $5.00 per can.

They bought an incubator that was heated with kerosene and held about 20 dozen eggs.  If you got 80% hatched, you did real well.  Men's work shirts were 50 cents to $1.00.  Overalls were $1.50 and other things in proportion.

Geoffry worked for Pete Wolfe who had a corn sheller.  Pay was $1.50 to $2.00 per day.  The Beazly boys bought a corn sheller after they had bought a steel wheeled Avery.  They also did some neighborhood shelling and threshing.

Mrs. Beazly was very patriotic  and helped raise money for Red Cross and War Bonds.  She was head of the knitting committee and the night before Dr. Young left for service she stayed up most of the night to make his sweater and the like.  The men did not get these issued to them as they do today.  He was called up suddenly.  Another committee she was on raised money for the Red Cross.  She had gotten a small sack of Gold Medal Flour that held a few ounces of flour that was sold over and over for 1,000's of dollars.  Times were hard, but then came the crash of 1929.

The Beazly's attended church regularly and then in the afternoon they went to Lindsey chapel about 4 miles north of Mansfield when the weather permitted.  They walked to church, even at night when the roads were too bad for the horse.

Mrs. Beazly died of cancer of the mouth, caused by a decayed tooth.  Mr. Beazly died of cancer of the prostrate gland.  May's death was caused by strep infection of the adrenal gland.

When the new church was built in Mansfield, the boys tore down the old church and used the lumber to build brooder houses and laying houses.  I helped some and got enough to build us a brooder house.  Both boys helped build the new church.

There were no luxuries in those days.  We were all glad to get by with the bare necessities.  It was 1939 to 1940 before farmers began to make money.

Glenn Meredith Job History

I found this list in my folders of my Dad's papers.  This is a list of the different jobs he had through his life.

1946                  Ran dairy plant for my parents
1948-1949        Worked for Sears Roebuck
July 1949          Got married and lived at Funks Grove, IL
Feb. 1950          Moved to Foosland farm
                          When my brother, Bob, got out of the Air Force, I wanted to try something new
July 1956          Ran a detasseling crew
Aug. 1956        Worked sweet corn run
Sept. 1956-57   Started with John Deere dealer in Bloomington, IL
1957-1960        Couldn't go to John Deere school so ran Standard Oil Gas Station in Leroy
                         Joined family farm corporation until Sept. 1969
                         Then worked as attendant at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
Nov. 1969        Became stagehand at Krannert Center, a job I truly enjoyed.
                        While there I moonlighted at several small jobs.
                        Learned to do electrician work from Bob Duggins (friend)
Aug. 1983       Forced into early retirement
                       Moved to Vidor, TX, did stage work, drove trucks for Ryder, moved semis
                       for DuPont, escorted oversized loads
   

Meredith Reunion - Summer 1991

The purpose of this was Dorthy wished that we could have a tribute to where we came from, from my mother's father and her mother's father.  I am paying tribute in my generation, Glenn and Shirley are taking their tributes of their own.

Eleanor Meredith:
To think that mother and father could just be here and see all the descendants of their generation.  What a wonderful sight it would be.  There are so many of us here today and yet we all aren't here.  Lester is missing and so many are missing.  It would be a larger crowd, but anyway it is wonderful that we have all met here together to pay tribute to your heritage.

I know that my tribute to my parents might be different than Lou, Dorthy and if Lester were here because Lester and I were of a younger time.  The rest of the family had grown and some had left home when I was a little girl.  The  biggest tribute that I can give to my parents is the attributes that they had and the home life that they gave to us was full of love, not only for us, but for God.  They loved their God and they made us understand that it was God that carried them through and it has gone down generation to generation for the most part I believe.  They also represented a tremendous amount of strength and courage and wanting something better for their family and only through God's help did they make that happen because we were very, very poor.  In my time we went through that dreadful depression, but you know I never thought of myself as being poor.  I remember others scurrying around trying to find a quarter here and there, but it didn't bother me.  It didn't bother me that she made all my dresses.  She wasn't the best seamstress in the world, but I never thought I was any different than all the other kids in school and I attribute that to my mother.  She made me feel a worthy as they were.  I didn't feel any lower because we were poor moneywise.  There are two ways of being poor.  One is you don't have any money.  The other is there is no love, no communication, no tenderness, no happiness in the home.  I'll tell you, I'll take the latter, because that's the way we lived.  We were poor moneywise but we were loaded with love and compassion from our parents.  They didn't push upon us, they just lived their lives the way they thought God wanted them to live and it rubbed off.  Believe me it does.  And it rubbed off on each and every one of us and we each and everyone have a stamina that was inherited from my parents and I give them all the credit.  I thank God that I came from the home that I came from, whether it was poor or what conditions we lived in, I was happy.

Father taught me so much sitting on the front porch about the weather.  We use to sit on the front porch and he taught me so many things that when I say something to somebody even today about the weather they don't understand it, they don't know what I'm talking about.  I contribute that to my father.  He had time for us.  He had time to go to the fair with us.  He had time, maybe not money, but he had time.  Quality time.  That is the whole difference.  So my tribute to my parents is that they were loving.  They didn't only love God, but they loved each other.  They were sweethearts till the day father died.  I remember them sitting on the sofa before Sandra as born and they were holding hands and all I ever saw of my mother and father was love.  Now those are my memories.  I don't know what the older children felt but that is what I felt, the tremendous love that they had for each other.  You don't find that very often these days.  That is my tribute.  I can't thank God enough that I came from the parents that I came from.

Now I would like to carry the tribute a little farther and make it a little more of a generalization.  To all the rest of you that are here today.  When .... and Homer and Dorothy and Roper and Lester and Ruth and I are gone the next oldest generation will be Paul, Glenn, Shirley and Joyce.  They are going to be the older generation and I would like to say something in generality.  I would like to have my mother and father come back for just a little while so that I might tell them and thank them for what they did for us and not think of the hurt.  I know that I hurt my mother a lot.  I use to say things in bitterness to her.  I can remember and I think how much that must of hurt her.  And of course she hurt me.  We parents, we hurt each other, we do the best we can.  I made a lot of mistakes as every father and mother here today have made raising their children.  If I could go back and live my life over again, maybe I'd make the same mistakes again, I don't know, because I've learned so much in the past five years.  If I'd known then.  But I know I caused mother a lot of hurt and I didn't write her when I was living in Wisconsin.  I didn't have time, I was raising my children just as all you young people are busy raising your children.  You haven't got time for mother and father, they'll get along.  Just stop and think of some of the times that you have hurt your parents and they have not said anything to you about it and maybe your parents had hurt you but they also have done a lot of things for you that you remember forever and don't neglect to tell them that you appreciate what they've done for you, now, while you have time.  Oh, I wish I could go back and make things right with my mother and father but I can't, it's too late, so I'm saying to you and I think this is the tribute to my parents, that I'm sorry for the things that I said and the way I neglected my parents at times when they needed me.  I didn't have time to go.  I was too busy and that happens to dare I say every mother and father here today.  The best thing you could do is to love your parents unconditionally.  That's what the Bible says and the parents to love their children unconditionally.  Oh, I just pray that each and every one of you will take the time while there is still time to tell your parents and to tell your children I Love You, I Love You No Matter What.  If you children could possibly know and I'm  speaking from experience, when my children tell me that they love me, how much it helps me, how much it makes me want to live.  There are a lot of times I haven't been told that and I couldn't care whether I lived or not.  But it doesn't take much for a mother to say to her daughter or son I Love you.  I love you no matter what.  And for a daughter or son to say to their mother and father I love you no matter what.  Be good to them and think about them once in awhile in their lonely, lonely times and I was speaking from experience there too how much all this means to them because believe me the years grow short when you reach September and then it is going to be too late and believe me those are the things you are going to remember after they are gone, that it is too late. And above all the happiness that you can give to your parents, that I hope my mother and father felt that each one of us children really loved each other.  Love is the greatest word in our vocabulary and it can do so much good so I would like to in my tribute to my parents I would like to express this to each and every one of you that my parents and your grandparents and your great grandparents loved each other beyond compare and they want you to love each other and express that love once in a while because it does so much when you grow old and it becomes September.

Shirley Meredith
Aunt Dorthy asked me to put together a little program and in keeping with this a little bit backwards from the way I had it arranged, but it doesn't make any difference, after Eleanors tribute to Grandma and Grandpa Sparrow, those of you who remember, what do you remember?

It is so often that I am giving or teaching a lesson and it happens to Paul in this scripture of the Beatitudes and it comes to Mercy, Mercy, how many of you remember Grandpa Meredith saying mercy, mercy.  And I say if we just had more mercy today how much better off we would be.  I never see a yellow rose bush that I don't see that yellow rose bush down there.  I never see an elephant ear plant in a black holder sitting out in the yard in the summer time that I don't think of Grandma Meredith.

Her ham gravy and biscuits.  White beans and ham.  Joyce - the one thing I remember of Grandma Meredith was at Grandpa's funeral - she bent over and kissed him.  She always called our toys play pretties and blouses were waists.  I remember her leaning over and I would brush her hair.  I remember she would take the cake of soap and wash my hands with hers and her hands were so soft and I thought how can that be when she works so hard.  She hummed Amazing Grace a lot.

The first memory I have of margarine was Grandma Meredith with this interesting packet of white stuff and this other little packet of yellow stuff and mixing the two together till it looked like butter and then putting it on a plate with some jam with a knife and stirring it all together before you applied it to the bread and I still make my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by mixing the peanut butter with the jelly before putting it on the bread.

The other memory I been thinking of quite a bit in the last six months or so, I used to have allergies when I was a kid and I kind of outgrew them and I think they are starting to come back, but some allergic reaction in my leg they just act like they are inflamed and I'll scratch and scratch and every time I do that I remember Grandma Meredith because her legs were just scratched, I'd watch her itch them and think she is going to tear the hide right off.  Now I know what she felt like.  I remember Grandad Meredith when they outlawed firecrackers and he said "Oh, what a shame.  These kids don't have anything to really enjoy the 4th of July with anymore."

Glenn Meredith
I had kind of an advantage over the rest of my cousins in that Grandpa and Grandma lived across the road from where I lived. Two things that you all will remember all at once.  One was Aunt Louisa giving Grandpa White Owl cigars every year for Christmas.  The other was a lot of you only came on family dinners got to have "hand pie."  Grandma Meredith made custard, you could carry it on your hand and go about doing your chores.  Having lived there and worked with them when they would go to the barn to milk their one or two cows I can hear them say "mother" and "father" and that was what they always called each other.  Leading the horse, plowing the potatoes, Grandpa going up to the pasture to water the hogs which were a quarter of a mile from the house and one day my father got on my mother about the way my brother and I were standing in a certain way.  Everyone of the Merediths will do it.  You'll stand this way (leaning forward with arms folded behind back).  Dad got on my brother and me unmercifully until we broke it because we were walking so stooped.  Grandpa walked stooped with that cane to go water the hogs.


Alan Meredith
I remember this last year being called upon to teach American History it is interesting to teach kids nowadays because there are too many things in life that you experienced.  I told them that I remembered December 7, 1941.  We were playing in the ditch bank at Grandmother's across the road when they announced the bombing of Peal Harbor.

Shirley
We were talking about Grandmother Meredith and about this family and about how most of them have lived a long life.  Carol said to me, "Well mother, that goes back to the Bible.  I want to take you back to Exodus 20:12 but I want to go down to Deuteronomy 5:16 "To honor your father and mother so that you may live long and it may go well with you."  That is mentioned again in Matthew and Luke and in Ephesians it says, "Children obey your parents of the Lord for this is right."  Honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with a promise.  That promise is that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy a long life.  This family has honored their father and mother.  We've lived long and done well.  I think that is where it all started, back to God and back to what was important to them.  Do you ever remember getting together in this family on Sunday when you didn't have to wait for everybody to get there from church.  That was an understood thing, everybody came from church.  How many of you have gone after dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's and Grandpa would lay down on the couch and Grandma sat and held his hand all the time that he slept.  I 've asked Alan to give a tribute to Dad's memory, Dad has been gone a long time.

Alan
I want to carry on the tradition, it took me a long time, Dad has been gone for quite some time now.  I don't know how long it took me, when I hit 52 I wasn't too happy about that.  There are several things about my father that I can remember.  There was the time we were living in Seymour and we were going to Mahomet to the Baptist Church and I''ll never forget the preacher said "It's hard for kids to get out of line when Mom sits on one end of the pew and Dad sits on the other and the four kids sit between them."  I remember going to the Farmer City Church, even though we milked the cows, we always went to church morning and evening.  I remember people used to say "When the Merediths got there it was time to start."  Dad was always in a hurry.  My name was Shorty.  I remember going to Farmer City, IL an trying to follow my father around which was very difficult because he always walked with a very large step at a very fast pace.  I had to take 4 steps to his 1.  He was always in a hurry.  He always had a sense of humor.  There were things that he said, things that he did as kids growing up.  If we would go out in the field, working in the field, if we get the tractor stuck or get stuck in the mud, he would always come out and the first thing he would say, "If you'd kept a going you wouldn't of got stuck." He always had that kind of humor about it.  He also had a serious side too.  When I was a kid growing up and Dad would look around at me and say "come here" you knew what was happening.  He maybe didn't do it enough.  I wanted to run the other way but I knew I better not.  He was one of the strongest men I ever knew.  I can remember him at the Old Harris School, he was hitching up a car to a trailer and he just reached up and grabbed ahold of that trailer and just pulled it up and dropped it on.  He shucked corn by hand and Dad could never find a shucking glove or a glove that would fit him.  He would put on a pair of gloves and his hands would split the back of the glove.  He was a big man, he was strong.  He gave to his children that strong will.  Being on a farm you did things early.  I remember going to the state fair and getting there before the gates were even open.  That was the way Dad did things, because you had to be back to milk the cows.  Some of the other things I remember about him was I never forget when I came home from college to study to be a minister and came home and told him I was going to get married, he said "Well anything is better than what you are."  He had a love, concern for all of his children.  I remember when Paul went away to the service, none of the rest of us could ever get anything out of him because he was always concerned about Paul.  He always wanted to see grandchildren.  I remember when he had his first grandson to carry on the name because that was a concern to Dad and a concern for everybody to carry on the Meredith name.  We've still got some Meredith's around and there will be Merediths around for a long time.

The only thing he didn't do early was teach 4-H calves to lead.  He wouldn't do that till the week before the fair.  We could hitch them up to the tractor or anything, but never early.  Would never decide which one he was going to take.  He taught us all how to milk cows.

I remember Ernest Meredith house with the office there.  I don't think I ever saw him out of a suit, he always had suit on no matter what day of the week we were there and it was just so grand to sit behind his desk, his desk was piled up with papers and he had a safe there.  I was so impressed by that safe that he had enough money to have a safe.

Grandpa never mowed the  roadside, never had time.  The one thing I remember was the story about him was that he jumped out an upstairs window an walked across the blackberry patch that hadn't been mowed, across the bridge and up another hill and when he walked in the neighbors house they woke him up.  Walked in his sleep.

Kathy/Kay
He was saying how he always remembered him in a suit, but all I remember was the overalls and the boots and the farmer hat.  He used to always tell "Turn off the water works" when we were crying.  He always wore gun boots didn't he?  Ethel always talked to us.  He was sitting behind his desk, I was impressed with that safe too.

Glenn
You all aren't talking about the same man I worked with.

 

Welcome!

Welcome to blog about the Meredith family.

This is a place where family history, stories, and genealogy will be recorded for easy access for all of us. I hope you find it useful. Enjoy!