An Ohio farm heritage

My paternal great-great grandfather John Myers owned our first farm in the U.S., probably in Fairfield County Ohio where his son Lafayette was born in 1861. It likely was was a few acres of low rolling hills that still are better suited to small farms than large-scale grain production.  To this German-speaking immigrant from Basel the land must have looked like home – even today it resembles the fields east of Munich.  A surviving family portrait from about 1912 is framed by the white porch of a farmhouse in Ridge Twp, Van Wert County Ohio. This remarkable photograph includes John, his son Lafayette, Lafeyette’s wife Elizabeth, and the oldest (William J.) and youngest (Jennie Mae) of Lafayette and Elizabeth’s 10 children.

Family and friends, 1912

A biographical sketch of William J. Myers, my grandfather, written by my father describes him as “a farmer at heart” although he worked at a variety of jobs over his 86 years. Between 1925 and 1965 he farmed up to 80 acres. I remember only two of my grandfather’s barns. Both were well-seasoned, having housed working horses and cattle, corn and hay. For a boy growing up in Detroit time spent there with gram’pa offered a glimpse of his completely different lifestyle, a first tractor ride, and the smells and sounds of the livestock. There was also a sense of his ownership, from the heavy barn doors that took a man’s shoulder to open to the high stacks of baled hay in the loft that was my playground.

W.J. Myers, Wife Ethel and children, about 1925

The nine-cornered farm begins

In late October 2010 deep old furrows and groups of bush-hogged stumps bore no relationship to the irregular outlines of the property that was to become the farm.  A survey showed that nine corner posts would be needed for property lines created by multiple adjacent plats and subsequent divisions of ownership.  The northwest corner was defined by an old oak tree, another was a bend in an otherwise straight boundary on the north.  Because the southwest corner was at the crest of a small hill new markers would be needed to define the south and west boundaries, and at some points the “rediscovered” property line was closer to decades-old summer cottages than we, or their owners, expected.  When  the last leaves had fallen in the wooded area to the west dense underbrush was no longer a barrier and a few posts were driven to identify the boundary of the adjacent Woodland Conservancy.   Lake-effect snow is abundant at Paw Paw lake, and as it blew off Lake Michigan and buried the stubble and stumps it was time to begin planning the Bluecircle farm.