An Unlikely Love Story: A City-Bred Musician and a 'Country Boy' Begin a New Life on a Missouri Farm

By Ken Weyand

"An Unlikely Love Story: A City-Bred Musician and a 'Country Boy' Begin a New Life on a Missouri Farm" traces the backgrounds of Ken Weyand's parents, a city-bred only daughter who became a musician, and an orphan boy who was following his late mother's dream to become a farmer. Ken recounts his mother's Chautauqua experiences, including her stint as one of the "Lassies" with "J. Coates Lockhart and His Scotch Lassies" and other troupes during the 1920s. He tells of his parents' chance meeting, year-long courtship, and marriage in the middle of a Midwestern ice storm, and continues with their struggle to remodel an old farmhouse and develop a productive Missouri farm during the Great Depression.

There are stories of his mother's struggle to cook for threshing crews, her efforts to make extra money raising chickens and selling eggs while giving piano lessons to rural children, and her efforts to cope with rural isolation. There are accounts of unique road trips, battles with mud roads, births of farm animals, and much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken Weyand
• Release date: Aug 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310057632

Ken Weyand

After receiving a degree in Journalism at the University of Missouri, Kenneth Charles Weyand worked ten years for the "Kansas City Star", becoming Advertising Copy Chief. Later he published several publications, including "Discover North", a monthly history and travel newspaper. After expanding the distribution from a single county to more than nine states, Weyand sold the publication in 2001, but continued to write for the paper, renamed "Discover Vintage America". For the past ten years, he has written a monthly history and travel column, “Traveling with Ken.”"Fiddling with Friends in the 1920s: A Chautauqua Trouper’s Story" is Ken's first book, capturing the life of his mother who, as a young woman, left her small town behind for a great adventure and a chance to get a first-hand look at a changing America in the early 20th Century. A much larger book, "An Unlikely Love Story," tells the unique story of two people from vastly different backgrounds who overcame great odds to begin a new life in the country during the depths of the Depression.The author's own remembrances of a country life are recounted in "Dirt Road Diary: Recalling a Country Childhood." It picks up where “An Unlikely Love Story” leaves off, and includes a lot of country-style memories. Both books will be published in the near future.Another book, "Early-Day Flying in Kansas City", based on a similar history published in 1970 and including material not in the original book, was released in October 2015.Weyand’s passion is kayaking, particularly in Florida. He is currently working on two eBooks on kayaking, both non-fiction, and plans to release them in the near future."Lost in the Everglades and Other Florida Paddling Adventures" recalls a harrowing experience, but is balanced with other experiences that were equally adventurous but more successful. If you’re a paddler or would like to be, you’ll enjoy reading this one."A Florida Paddling Bucket List" is currently being compiled for paddlers (and would-be paddlers) looking to make the most of their free time on Florida rivers, creeks and estuaries, with helpful tips on where to launch and take out, and what to expect at each location. Factoids of local history are included.Contact Ken at [e-mail].

Book preview

MY PARENTS WERE PACK RATS. In the late 1980s, when the time came for me, my parents' only child, to clean out their house, the accumulation of junk I found was staggering. After I threw out their collections of plastic ice cream containers, fast-food napkins, out-of-date calendars, and much more, I discovered something else: my mother saved old letters that dated back for years.

When I started to get rid of them, I realized that a few contained old photos and occasionally even money. So my plans for a quick disposal of her collection turned into a painstaking perusal, as I examined her hoard of old correspondence.

But this was only the beginning. I eventually discovered much more: boxes of old letters, including love letters from both maternal and paternal grandparents, plus postcards and letters written by my mother to her parents from college and on the road with Chautauqua and Lyceum tours in the 1920s.

There also was a trove of what were called links letters: a series of chain letters my dad and his seven siblings exchanged after they became orphans in 1900. Started by Florence, the oldest sibling, the letters began in 1906 and continued into the 1930s. Ruth, youngest of the siblings, was the family archivist, and saved most of them. On her death the collection passed to my mother, and then to me.

My mother also was a diarist, maintaining a daily record of her life in brief diary entries from high school days until a few years before her death in 1983. Although her diary entries included weather reports and mundane daily activities, they comprised a history of a reserved, shy girl who became a professional musician, music teacher, and entertainer—traveling through much of North America on Chautauqua circuits—and serving on the faculty of two conservatories of music.

She also was a prodigious correspondent, writing cards and letters to her parents at the rate of two or more a week for years. During her Chautauqua career, some of her correspondence was on postcards, with postmarks ranging from Florida and south Texas to Saskatchewan, Canada.

By contrast, my dad struggled with letter writing and all things literary, but as an orphan, managed to maintain a correspondence with his siblings in the link letters I mentioned previously. In later years, he talked freely about his early life, giving his journalist son a valuable look into what made him tick. He took pride in the fact that he managed to work his way through college and acquire a prosperous farm, mostly during the depths of the Great Depression. It was no small feat, considering that he had been left a penniless orphan at age 7.

As different as my parents' backgrounds and talents were, they shared a strong religious faith, and a belief that hard work and perseverance would give them the life they wanted. To me, the way they overcame their own differences and the adversities of farm life during the Depression years is amazing.

But as I read my mother's diary and her letters, I realized that her idea of the perfect life was far from what my dad envisioned. She was a town girl, accustomed to an environment in which close friends, music, shopping and entertainment were within a short walk. In college, a week rarely went by that she didn't attend a play, concert, lecture, or recital.

In Chautauqua, she rubbed elbows with musicians, lecturers, and other entertainers who were at the height of their careers. She loved to travel and had a thirst for knowledge, opting to visit historic sites on the open tour dates while others in the troupe loafed or went shopping. Always faithful in her church attendance, she even tried to choose services that offered, in her words, splendid sermons and music.

But while she would be considered quaintly Victorian in her beliefs by today's standards, when it came to religion, she had her standards—and limits. On one of her Chautauqua tours, she visited a school where an evangelical preacher lectured a group of children, warning them of eternal damnation if they didn't come to Jesus, and she was appalled at his bullying tactics. After attending another church at one of the tour stops, she was highly critical of the dull sermon. In her diary she wrote that the minister thought he was called to Preach Christ. He was clearly meant to Plough Corn. In Des Moines, she attended a revival service conducted by Aimee Semple McPherson, and described the evangelist in her diary: "She is beautiful and has a gift of attracting by her personality, but she is very ignorant and appeals chiefly to that class."

Before she met my dad, Mother expressed disdain for the isolation of rural life. Once, when her mother wrote her about a local man who was going into farming, she wrote back, Yes, I think Charles is too fine to be 'lost' on a farm. Many fellows who have no personality to speak of and very little talent for anything else should be on the farm.

Two years later, after she and my dad were engaged, her concerns about living on an isolated farm were still very real. In one of her letters to him she wrote, Much as I agree with you that the country is a lovely place, at the same time, as a steady diet, I am not so certain. I feel sure I shall like it for probably a year or so, but just now the idea of living on and on indefinitely on the farm palls on me terribly.

My parents on the front lawn of the farmhouse, about 1935.

Behind them are rolling pastures and bottomland—parcels my

dad purchased over the years. Note my mother's cat, Peggy,

lying at her feet. (Photo taken by my aunt, Ruth Weyand.)

By New Year's Day 1928, she apparently had overcome her concerns. My parents were married in a small private ceremony at a minister's house in Keokuk, Iowa. Their wedding originally was planned for Jacksonville, Illinois, where many of her old friends and faculty colleagues at Illinois College would attend. But a winter storm had closed the roads and no trains were running.

Although she adapted well to farm life, my dad made sure she was able to visit her parents often. And he made the house an island of culture in the midst of the rural landscape. There would be a music room with a piano, where she would give lessons to local youngsters. A furnace, modern indoor plumbing, and hardwood floors made the house superior to those of most of their neighbors. And as soon as they were able to get a radio, Mother listened to classical music on a station from Ames, Iowa every afternoon.

One of Mother's biggest accomplishments came on the day she prepared a huge threshing dinner for 18 men—a task she had dreaded for months. Although she was a bit of a misfit among her fellow farm wives, she soon gained their respect with her hard work and self-effacing sweetness. And her musical abilities kept her in demand as a pianist at church weddings, funerals and other services in the community.

Still, her life at Hillcrest Farm would have its setbacks. There would be two miscarriages before I was born, just before she turned 43. Barely recovered from the caesarian operation that delivered me, her father, whom she idolized, would die suddenly. And in the years before rural roads in the area were graveled, a sudden rain would turn the dusty roadways to impassable mud, thwarting any plans she had to escape the rural isolation.

Still she made the most of her life, sharing her love of music with new and unexpected friends, continuing her pursuit of travel and learning, and becoming a valued partner in a country enterprise she once considered beneath her.

This book is dedicated to my parents and their story—as unlikely as it is—and to my daughters, my grandsons, and all who come after them.

Special thanks to my younger daughter, Holly, who designed the cover, and helped make the book possible with editing and formatting.

PART ONE:

A childhood prediction comes true

Chapter 1: A Yankee 'conquers the South'

My father, Elmer Joseph Weyand, became an orphan at the age of seven. There were eight siblings: four boys and four girls, living in the bustling river town of Keokuk, Iowa, where their father operated a grocery store on a residential street. Dad was the youngest boy, two years older than Ruth, the youngest sibling.

The family had always known hard times. My grandfather, named William for his father, but called Will, was born in 1856 in Bridesburg, Pennsylvania, then a Philadelphia suburb. His father, who called himself Wilhelm when he emigrated from Germany in 1840, was a minister in the German Methodist Church and listed his occupation as missionary on the early census forms.

Wedding photos: Mary Miller (Molly) and William Weyand ("Will)

About 1875, in his late teens, Will moved to Keokuk, possibly at the suggestion of his uncle Henry, who owned a fruit and vegetable business at 14th and Johnson. In 1878, perhaps staying with his aunt and uncle, Will went to work for the firm of William Wilson, Grocer, as a clerk.

It was about this time that Will found himself desperately in love with Mary Miller (called Molly), a girl from a large family in Warsaw, Illinois, a few miles down-river. In an era before automobiles and telephones, much of Will's courting was done by steamboat, and he lived for his weekend trips to Warsaw, often taking the small stern-wheeler, Plough Boy. Molly, who worked as a milliner at her older sister Hester's shop in Warsaw, occasionally traveled to Keokuk to buy supplies at a large mercantile. Will may have met her through his cousin, Caroline (called Carrie), who worked at the mercantile. Between their weekend visits, Will and Molly exchanged numerous letters.

Will had an uphill battle selling himself to Molly's family. Her parents, Joseph and Mary Waltman Miller (also called Molly), came from Loudon County, Virginia, and in 1837 traveled by covered wagon to La Grange, Missouri, in Lewis County on the Mississippi River. Records indicate Joseph was engaged in business there.

By 1841 the family homesteaded in northeast Missouri in Scotland County. Although they weren't the first to settle in the county, the Millers and Lockharts, who came with them from Virginia, were among the first to make their homes in the Johnson Township. According to at least one early-day newspaper report, their land holdings made up one of the largest farms in the state, growing into a cattle and