USA > Illinois > Moultrie County > Bethany > A history of Bethany > Part 5
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George Bone, sitting next to Fulk, began to put his foot down on the floor accelerator. The car started going faster and faster.
Panic gripped Fulk. He broke out in a sweat as he tried to control his auto. Finally he yelled out: "Bail out, boys! I've lost control of the car!"
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Chapter 8 The Sparkle of Senior Citizens
Bethany has many senior citizens who are as bright and as articulate and who remember clearly how Bethany was in the early days. Although they are in their 80s and 90s, they remain quite active.
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Author Jim Scott, left, chats with Raymond Scheer about early Bethany history.
Raymond and Millie Scheer, both in their mid-80s, con- tinue as sharp and as interesting as they were 40 years ago, when Raymond was a high school principal and top musi- cian. Their memories are so keen, they provided me with much of the early-day Bethany in this book.
O. E. Wheeler is a ring-tailed marvel, still a carpenter and craftsman at the age of 93, in 1975.
Since I didn't know where he lived, Mary Scott drove me to his workshop.
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O.E. Wheeler
As we approached, O. E. remarked to Mary: "I thought you were dead!"
"Why?" replied Mary.
"Because I haven't seen you in a long time."
Then Mary introduced me.
"Say, you were supposed to be skinny," remarked O.E.
O.E. still works daily in his shop, repairing the furniture and building chests of drawers, desks and other household needs of the housewives of Bethany.
He also turns out beautiful works of art, using different colored woods.
Wheeler did a facsimile of Dwight Eisenhower's barn, which he sent to him before he died. And he received a con- gratulatory letter from Ike.
O. E. also did a likeness of the Last Supper. He used wood from all over the world to create a picture depicting the realistic characteristics of the age-old story. He bought various woods from such nations as Burma and Australia, as well as several countries in Africa.
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And he did a portrait of Christ in the Garden for the Free Methodist Church in Bethany.
Mrs. Scott left after the introduction and soon O. E.'s friend, Diamond Tipsword, entered. She asked "O. E. did you find the file you lost?"
"No," he replied. "But I made me another one. Here it is."
In the 1920s, Wheeler purchased a suit of clothes from the Hudson Bros., a long-closed men's shop in Bethany.
He was soon too big for it so he kept it in his closet.
"I shrank in recent years," he related. "So I put it on and wore it to church last Sunday."
He chuckled.
"Several people congratulated me on my new suit."
O. E. taught carpentry to his son, Mark, and several of his grandsons.
When Wheeler was younger, he built 52 homes in Oklahoma City, 16 in Bethany and 12 in Decatur, Ill.
Wheeler never misses a church service on Sunday, but he was not enthusiastic over religion as a youngster.
One Sunday, when he was 10, he asked his mother if he could get his friend, Earl Smith, to go to church with him.
"All right," replied his mother, "but hurry back."
While at the Smith home, Earl took O. E. down the road to enjoy a new plant called garlic.
When they returned home, his mother was overcome by the smell.
Thinking it was a trick to escape going to church, she made O. E. stay home all day.
Wheeler has worked with wood most of his life, begin- ning at the age of 13, when he helped his father build a house in Greenville, Ill.
After working many years as a contractor, he later took up cabinet making and then turned to artistic work.
In the Bethany area, his wooden compote type bowls are familiar to everyone, and he is kept busy with orders, although he finds it impossible to keep up with all the demands on his time. Someimes, sadly, he must say "No."
He recently did a blind man's checkerboard. In it, half of the squares are raised for the choice of black or red tiles. He also has turned out many conventional checkerboards.
His shop is a large one-room building filled with many power tools and various woods, plus many unfinished pro-
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jects he is working on. It also contains a pot-bellied stove, used in winter.
Wheeler, mentioning toward a lathe, warned of its danger if not handled properly. He displayed one hand that had parts of two fingers missing.
"I know because this is what happened to me," he said. "Worse, when it happened, the doctor was out of town."
O. E. Wheeler opens his shop by 7 a.m. daily and works till darkness intervenes. He also toils there on Sunday afternoons.
Jennie Collier, who left Bethany in 1918 and returned in 1939, has led a most interesting life - and she was still enjoying it at the age of 84 in 1975.
One of her early memories of Bethany is the black en- campment in the woods north of Bethany between 1890 and 1900.
"They would sing beautiful Negro spirituals," she re- called. "I knew many of them for they would come to our house for drinking water. Many townspeople attended the meeting, for they were charged only 10 cents."
When her late sister, Blanche, and Jennie were in a ship headed for Europe in 1927, Charles Lindberg passed overhead in his historic flight.
Blanche and Jennie were attending Harvard Medical School in 1931, when they were offered a chance to go to Java to study the wood-feeding roaches, They, of course, accepted.
In World War I, Jennie served as a physical therapist.
She attended the University of Illinois Academy, the last year it operated in 1917. Her, parents, William and Louise Collier, died in 1917.
Jennie remembered well the wonderful potluck dinners in the Logan Department store in Bethany when she was a girl, and Logan also had a big millinery department.
She also recalled eating at the Logan Hotel, which ran from 1880 to 1910.
"When I attended grace school in Bethany," she said, "there was a creek running across the yard, crossed by a wooden bridge. We skated on the river in winter. And there also was a swinging bridge west of town. We girls would go there in the spring to gather flowers and in the fall to pick up nuts.
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"I also remember chewing part of the red elm tree. We took off the bark with a butcher knife. It was good for cleaning the teeth.
"In the early 1900s, we had a chautauqua every summer. And a circus also stopped nearly every summer, preceded by a parade down Main Street.
"Our commencement from high school was held in the Vadakin Opera House.
"Around 1915, we had big roller skating rink, under a tent in Bethany.
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1909 Graduation Class, Bethany High School.
Front, left to right: Gertrude Stradley, Margaret McGuire, Eva Ward, March Crowder, Jennie Collier, Osa Mode.
Back row: Amy Crowder, Roby McAmos, Web Rose, Fred Lytle, Harry Stables. Ancil Livesey.
Jennie is a small lady of culture, soft-spoken and with complete recall of early-day Bethany. She lives alone in a houseful of glowing memories of travels with her two late sisters.
Her home, in the north section of Bethany, is most in- teresting. Near the entrance is a chest, made from her childhood piano.
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Miss Collier also is much impressed by Wheeler. And she's a little sad that one of his creations is long gone. That would be his eight-sided barn he built in 1912 on the Bone farm east of Bethany. One eighth was a crib, the other seven sections were stalls for two horses each.
But one beautiful barn remains on the Foster farm, east of Bethany. It was built by Millard Livesey before the turn of the century. It has a rounded archway leading into the basement floor.
And Mrs. Dewey (Marjorie Hogg) Low, though faint of vision and in her 70s, has attracted national attention on her work of art.
Majorie started out making rugs. Then she included 12 original ideas, such as flower baskets, placemats, potted plant covers, belts, etc.
She incorporates such things as bread wrappers for mak- ing her flowers and for macrame for hanging pots.
She has been so successful that she has been offered jobs in the East, and a class in Brooklyn is using her ideas.
Mrs. Low told Ruth Suddarth, during an interview for the Echo, that she is never bored and, despite the fact her eyesight is quite blurred, she still does some drawings and paintings.
And her husband, peppery Dewey, keeps busy keeping the house in shape.
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Chapter 9
A. R. Scott's State Bank
A. R. Scott, who founded the Scott State Bank in Bethany, provided financing in its early days that helped develop the town into a fine agriculture community.
A. R.'s Grandfather was James Scott, who brought his family from Tennessee to Mt. Zion in 1824 and to a farm near Bethany in 1853.
Before coming to Illinois, James had freed his 20 slaves, giving each of them his choice of a homesite.
In those early days, judges were rough on thieves. One judge, a friend of James Scott, ordered a thief to be whipped 40 lashes on his bare back and the other at the same time for 30 lashes. Each also was fined $100 and im- prisoned three months.
Many of the Marrow- bone Township citizens suffered excruciatingly in those days, including the Milton Scott family, an uncle of A. R. Scott. In 1863, the family was nearly fatally poisoned when Milton's two youngest children emptied rat poison into the meat barrel. The other five members of the family became critically ill but the prepetrators did not eat it. The rest recovered but suffered from the ill effects of the poison for the rest of their lives, an old clipping claims .*
A. R. Scott
Alfred R. Scott was born in Mt. Zion June 27, 1845. He was 6 years old when his family moved to a log cabin near Bethany. He was educated at the Mt. Zion Academy, one of the best schools in the Midwest at that time.
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Scott married Mary J. Smith Sept. 8, 1868. He taught school for two years. In 1870, W. P. McGuire started a store building in Bethany, and Scott purchased it before it was finished.
This was before the railroad came to Bethany, and travel was horrendous. After Scott opened his store, a big snow- fall hit. and he promptly sold all his boots.
The Peoria-Decatur-Evansville Railroad was built through Bethany in 1872 and, shortly after, A. R. became the agent at the depot, one of his numerous jobs.
Sarah Rankin, whose family was first to settle in Illinois, came to Bethany in 1821 to support herself by the tailor's trade. She later taught her daughter, Amanda, who was soon making suits for all the men in town. She made two suits for O. M. Scott before he entered Lincoln College.
An account book of hers was found showing her work for Philo Hale in 1840. She was paid $1 for the pantaloons and $1.50 for the overcoat. When Amanda was a young girl, she said she wished to marry Milton Scott and that her step- sister, Lunicy Fruit, would marry Frank Scott. And both did.
In 1885, you could reach Bethany only by paths through the high prairie grass. Night traveling was necessary because of the big, green flies that bit in the daytime.
Kind-hearted Amanda Scott never went to bed on a stormy night without placing a burning candle in the up- stairs window as a guide for anyone who might be lost in the prairie.
She never turned down a hungry tramp who knocked at her door, and sometimes kept them overnight. Once, the family suffered from body-lice, picked up from an itinerant.
When Amanda Scott died in May, 1888, she was buried in Mt. Zion.
A fearful storm was spied coming in from the southwest. The hearse-driver whipped his team into a fast trot to get the body there before the storm broke.
The minister. Rev. James Hogg, coming from Bethany, was delayed by the storm. After waiting for an hour, the funeral director took the body to the cemetery and buried it. After the burial, the Rev. Mr. Hogg arrived, and he proceeded with the funeral service.
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A grist and saw mill was operated by John Heiland, and Scott bought it and hired Tom Clark to run it for him.
It proved such a success that A. R. decided to build a larger mill near the railroad track. It was finished in 1882 at a cost of $25,000.
Shortly after, many large flour mills were going up in the northern states, where wheat could be bought at a low cost, making it difficult for the small mills to make money. When Scott's large mill was completed, the smaller grist mill was abandoned and the saw mill sold to W. D. Fortner.
At this time, A. R. Scott was in business with his brother, A. W. Scott, in a large general store. He had several other jobs. In 1870, he was appointed as Bethany's postmaster.
A. R. had an iron safe in his mill, and a number of his customers would leave their money in it.
It was then that Alfred realized Bethany needed a bank so he proceeded to open one.
He called it the Exchange Bank when it was opened in 1887. Alfred engaged Smith Walker, a Bethany boy work- ing in a Decatur bank, as his cashier.
The banking business was conducted in the mill office while the bank building on Main Street was being built in 1898.
Shortly after, the name was changed to Scott State Bank.
The structure Scott had built for the flour mill proved unsuitable for handling corn and small grain so he purchased the elevator building. It was operated by Scott and T. L. Bone, Scott later purchasing Bone's interest.
Scott and S. M. McReynolds were partners in buying livestock and grain and shipping them from Bethany.
They would start out early in the morning in a horse and buggy. Scott would take a wad of big bills with him, and he would be gone all day. He would pay cash for the cattle and grain on the spot, which pleased the farmers. Often, he would buy 15,000 bushels of corn in one day.
But soon the banking business began requiring much more of his time. Regretfully, Scott sold his elevator to the Bethany Grain Co.
Still, he couldn't get the grain market off his mind. Every day he visited the elevator, for the price of grain
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Bethany Grain Co. Elevator and Office, Bethany IIt. 24?
A.R. Scott & Company, later Bethany Grain Company.
meant so much to the farmers with whom he did business.
The Scott State Bank was so successful that it attracted competition from another bank, Bethany State Bank, founded by Bob Noble.
It folded in July, 1918, much to the distress of its depositors.
O. E. Wheeler had built a barn for Noble, which burned down. He was working on a second barn in the summer of 1918, when he received a call saying that the bank had folded and to stop work. "I lost $75 when it folded," com- mented O.E.
But Aaron DeBruler had the worst experience. He had just sold a high-priced car and now he was in the bank to deposit his check.
The clerk said: "Better keep your money."
"But I want to deposit it," replied DeBruler. "I don't like to carry that much with me."
"Oh, no," said the clerk. "You'd be better off to keep it."
Back and forth went the exchange, and, finally, the clerk agreed to take the deposit.
As DeBruler left the bank, the man opened the door and said, "Goodby, this bank is out of business."
Later, the bank paid out 25 cents on each dollar.
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Meantime, the Scott State Bank continued to grow. And, in 1919, A. R. built a block long, two-story brick building. It was to have many tenants on the first floor, in- cluding the C. B. Smith Drug store and the post office. And for 20 years, H. W. Watters operated a dentist office over the bank.
Scott was a builder, always looking to the future of the community. There are hundreds of men in Marrowbone Township who say that they owe all they have to Scott who pushed them onward and upward with his own resources.
A sedate but friendly man, he was always prodding others to do better. Nothing ever rattled him, nothing dis- tressed him.
If a young man was working on a farm for someone else and who seemed industrious and eager, Scott would call him into his office and ask why he did not start farming for himself.
The reply always was the youngster had no money.
Then A. R. would add: "I'll take care of the financing."
If the young man then did well in farming for himself and saved some money, he again would be summoned by A. R.
This time he would tell him of a farm that was going to be sold and could be bought at a fair price.
"Why don't you buy it?" the banker would ask.
Again the reply: "I don't have the money."
"I will take care of that," countered A. R.
A. R. Scott's influence was felt in financing throughout the Midwest.
Once a Bethany man who had been shipping livestock attended a meeting in Indianapolis. A stranger approached him and asked if he wasn't from Bethany. When he said he was, the man began to praise A. R. Scott.
"Years ago I was a clerk in a commission house in In- dianapolis," he related. "We were handling livestock from Scott & McReynolds of Bethany.
"One day Scott asked me why I did not get into business for myself. He said he would ship his stock to me and in- fluence others to do so. I told him I had no money. Scott replied he would provide it. So I made the plunge. And I was successful."
The man later became a director of the largest bank in Indianapolis.
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"If it weren't for your A. R. Scott, I would still be a clerk in a commission house," he added.
A. R. never mentioned the help he gave others. Always the information came from those he helped.
Scott became a member of the Bethany Presbyterian Church, Bethany Masonic Lodge and a member of the board of Millikin University.
A. R. and Mary had four sons and four daughters: Hugh, S. J. (Jay), Smith and Troy, all of Bethany; Mrs. Russell Camp and Mrs. A. L. Wilkinson, both of Bement; Dr. Augusta Scott of New York City and Mrs. A. L. Wilkinson of Bethany. All were dead by the time this book was written.
Carl Mathias and Hugh Younger worked in the Scott State Bank in the early days. Troy Scott joined the bank in 1900, Smith in 1908, and Jay in 1913. Hugh Scott lived for eight years in Alabama and later joined the bank.
For years, A. R. Scott lived in a big house across the street from the Bethany Grade School.
Smith still lived with his father until he was married. Slim as a hitching post. Smith had his neckties tied from the light fixture in the ceiling of his bedroom, so that he could pull the switch after he had retired for the night.
He loved children and always carried a supply of Beechnut chewing gum to give them. After he left, Hugh and Sadie Scott, Hugh's former school teacher, kept house for him, and their son Sport was always in action.
Mrs. Scheer and others recall seeing A. R. Scott walking to his home at noon, always lost in thought. His head would be down, his hands clasped behind his back.
At family reunions, he always brought a box of Hershey bars to distribute to the children.
In his later years, he would play solitaire after his noon meal. Gradually, his head would sink and soon he would be asleep. He would sleep for about an hour and then would wake up and return to the bank.
An Eagle Scout, Sport was always into something, usually the frozen confection in his mother's new refrigerator. Our grandfather, A. R., was in his 70s when Sport built a tennis court in the backyard, and he had A. R. out on the court, hitting the ball when it came close to him.
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A. R. became careless in his personal habits in his old age. Once I was driving him to the bank in winter. He chewed tobacco. Since it was winter, the windows were closed. He spat tobacco juice out of the window, which he thought was open but which wasn't.
The big house of A. R. Scott burned to the ground in February, 1929. As the flames shot high into the still air, A. R. leaned against a tree in the front yard and phil- osophically watched it being destroyed.
He then moved into the home of his daughter, Ida Wilkinson, on the same block. Later, after retiring, he moved to Bement to live with another daughter, Marie Camp.
A. R. Scott died at the age of 90, Nov. 8, 1935, in the Decatur & Macon County Hospital. He had fallen and broken his hip a few days before. Death was caused by penumonia, which stemmed from the injury.
The Nov. 15, 1935 Bethany Echo, carrying the article of A. R. Scott's death, had another story on the first page tell- ing of the marriage in Divernon, Ill., of Mary Florence Weidner and Joe Scott, who was then working for the Federal Land Bank in St. Louis.
The two events had more significance than anyone could realize at the time. By 1975, Mary Weidner Scott had con- trolling interest in the Scott State Bank.
After Troy Scott re- tired as president of the Scott State Bank in 1955, Joe Scott, son of Jay Scott, succeeded him. He was the only grandson trained in banking. Troy died July 23, 1957 and Smith Feb. 20, 1957. Hugh had died Aug. 10, 1941 and Jay, June 26, 1961.
Joe Scott
After Joe Scott died suddenly Aug. 2, 1970, Sam, Joe's son, who was in the Army, returned home to help out at the bank. He had worked in a bank in Denver, after his
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graduation from college, and was familiar with the bank- ing business. Not long afterward, he was named president of the bank.
Joe was a friendly fellow who always had a smile on his face, a joke on his lips.
A resourceful man, he had the answer for every problem. Even as a boy he could cope with any situation.
Once he had a small vegetable garden, One of Elmer McIlwain's chickens kept getting into it. So Joe took a grain of corn, threaded it with a string to which he at- tached a note that read: "Please keep me at home."
Joe's widow, Mary, is of the same stripe, a vivacious, happy-go-lucky woman, she looks about the same as she did in high school, aided by good facial bones. A jolly, erudite executive, she is a fine asset to the bank through her friendliness to all.
While most old Bethany business houses have long since folded, the Scott State Bank keeps growing.
Its staff in 1975 numbered: Sam Scott, president; Fred Young, trust officer and farm manager; Wilbur Lancaster, cashier; Glenn Austin, assistant cashier, and tellers Norma Flannell, Mildred Tipsword, Mary Fitzgerald, Nancy Chance, Diane Florey and Eileen Marshall. Mary Scott serves as vice-president.
Austin has become Bethany's foremost historian, the best known man in town. I have sold more than 1,000 ar- ticles to national publications and written several books, but never in my life have I received such cooperation and help as I got from Austin in the research for this book.
The Scott State Bank has always been a leader in its field. It was the first bank in Moultrie County to install a modern bookkeeping system, when it obtained the machine from Burroughs Oct. 29, 1915. And it was twice robbed.
It was first robbed late at night Dec. 30, 1902 by four men in a buggy. The jail was then located near the telephone office. The bandits tied up the night watchman, John Robertson, put a piece of coal in his mouth and gagged him. Then they blew up the safe and escaped with $2,000. They were never captured.
I remember well the second robbery July 9, 1936. I had
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become a sportswriter for the Decatur Review, and was home on week's vacation. I came in the bank shortly after it was held up, and was able to get the story into the Review that afternoon.
The two bandits escaped with $1,350, taking cashier Hugh Scott with them. He later was dumped out. Junior Marshall and Bliss Schwartz gave chase in the Schwartz car and kept after them until Decatur police arrived on a field east of Decatur.
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T.A. Scott
Troy Scott, bank president, had called Decatur police right after the holdup.
Shortly after, the two thugs, Joe L. Poole, 37, and Peter Samueloff, 40, were killed in a gun battle with police near route 132. Both were former convicts.
A. R. Scott served as bank president, 1904-1931; T. A. Scott, 1932-1954; S. J. Scott, Jr., 1955-1970; Mary W. Scott, 1971-1974; Sam Scott, 1975-
Sons of the Scott brothers and sisters have succeeded in diverse fields.
Scott Wilkinson, son of Arthur and Ida, became a promi- nent pediatrician in Decatur; his brother, Arthur, was an executive with Macy's in New York and a fine accountant; George Wilkinson, son of Etha and Arthur, is president of the Bement State Bank; Anna Jane Scott, daughter of Jay and Vira, and sister of Joe, became a high school teacher,
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who was crippled and whose husband, Ellison Hoke, was killed when both were struck by a car. Anna Jane now lives in Bell Vista. Ark. Their younger brother, Rodney A. Scott, is chief judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Illinois.
Troy, Jr., a son of Troy and Mabel Scott, is a senior research scientist at Honeywell in Minneapolis; one of his sisters, Majorie Scott, taught at Bethany High School for 23 years and now lives in Silver Spring, Md. with her sister, Julia, who long worked for the Navy Ordinance and U.S. Agriculture Library in Washington, D. C. Their brother, Jim, today is a writer of books and magazine articles liv- ing in Berkeley, Calif.
Sport, son of Hugh and Sadie, works in Southern Arizona. Smith Scott's son, John, perished in World War II.
Sam Scott
Sam Scott may be the first president of the Scott State Bank with a full appreciation of public relations.
Not only does he have one of the best young historians in the nation in Glenn Austin, but also Sam shows his own talent in his zinging explanation of bank policies in his Echo ads.
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1967 aerial photo looking northeast
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