File:Tom, The Share Cropper, by Rawdon K. Lowe.jpg

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An article written by William Rawdon Kendull Lowe.

This image was received from Tom O'Connor a descendant of Linda Ethel Lowe, brother of William Rawdon Kendull Lowe.

Transcription

Tom, The Share Cropper
By Rawdon K. Lowe
Article # 10

The year 1900 was a Red Letter year for the Lowe family. Tom and Linda had been married just twenty-five years and on Sept. 2 1900 their thirteenth child was born, a girl, which increased the family to eight girls and five boys. By listing the names of all the children, probably there may be some of the folks still living in Pendleton County who could remember them, or at least the younger ones. The oldest daughter whose name was Maude, passed away in 1927 at the age of fifty-one; and the oldest son whose name was Thomas Marion, who died in 1931 at the age of fifty-three; Nancy who was named for her grandmother Gray, who died in 1911 at the age of twenty-eight; Daisy who died of scarlet fever, in infancy, 1885 at the age of one; Arthur, who died of a heart attack in 1922 at the age of forty; Emmet, who died in 1905, from a heart ailment, at the age of seventeen; Nettie, who died in 1924 from child-birth, at the age of thirty-four; Mayme, who died in 1964 at the age of sixty-one; James William, who died in 1962 at the age of sixty-six; which leaves only three still living, Linda who is 79; Rawdon, the boy twin, who is 74; and Berdie who is 68. Their father Tom died in 1915 at the age of 61, and their mother died in 1935 at the age of 81.

They really had not ran out of names when the last girl was born, she derived the name Birdie from her four year old brother Rawdon, who had the habit of wandering through the cow-pasture peeping into hollow stumps, which sometimes contained bird's nests with young birds just hatched When the birds were disturbed by his approach, thinking it was the mother bird returning to feed them, they would stretch their necks upward with their mouth open for her to drop the food in. So when Rawdon was permitted to see the new baby for the first time, it turned its face toward him with its mouth open as though it was expecting to be fed, and the boy said; "Just like a littl young bird!" So, that's how it happened that the baby was named Birdie.

This took place on the Jake Eckler farm in the vicinity of Tom Purdy's farm, Martin Cooper's and the former Sam Ravenscraft farms, where the Lowe family lived in the tenement house on the Eckler farm. Tom's eldest daughter, Maude, who had married Knute Fornash, the rock-napper, lived with her husband in the old Whalen house built along side the road atop a steep cliff overlooking the Licking River and Hayse Valley Distillery in the distance. It was while living there that Maude's first son was born about two weeks before her Mother's thirteenth, or last, daughter was born, which seemed much out-of-order for a girl to have a nephew older than her. Knute always managed to find a place to live in the vicinity of where Tom rented a farm, and Tom ...

(A portion of the article is cut off here.)

The Eckler farm was located in the hill country, which was a vast contrast to the rich sod-land of the river bottoms, but Tom had tilled hill land before and was skilled in laying out crop plots, by furrowing the rows with the contour of the terrain to prevent gulley washes during the rainy season, which would damage the crops as well as the land.

Tom's favorite son, the twin, liked to meander through old cow pastures, especially to follow a cowpath through a bush-tunnel, where the branches spread across the path on each side to overlap and form a tunnel. On his first exploring trip through one of these tunnels he had met up with a long slender green snake lying atop of the branches protruding and withdrawing its long red forked tongue to frighten him away. This caused him to exercise care, and discern that all the green things extending across the path were not branches. His first belief in creation of God was discovered when he came upon a large cocoon hanging from a twig in a bush-tunnel, which was in the process of emiting the larvae, and he watched it with open mouth and eyes dilated until a large fly came forth and stood for a moment stretching its long legs and broad wings, then arose with a buzzing sound to soar skyward as it flew away. On another occasion while following a cow path mounted on his stick-horse, he spied two Dorr-beetles rolling the ball, which they had deposited their larvae in, ...

(The rest is missing.)

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current08:40, 26 February 2011Thumbnail for version as of 08:40, 26 February 20111,780 × 1,980 (2.45 MB)Seanmcox (talk | contribs)An article written by William Rawdon Kendull Lowe. This image was received from Tom O'Connor a descendant of Linda Ethel Lowe, brother of William Rawdon Kendull Lowe.

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