PLUM GROVE, BUTLER CO., KANSAS, FRIDAY, 3 SEPT. 1880
Note: The Peabody Gazette gives us some real insight into life in Plum Grove in the late 1870s and early 1880s. In this weekly newspaper, we find columns entitled “Plum Grove Items.” These columns were mostly submitted by two authors. The first contributor signs his name “A Star Cus,” It is easy to deduce from the style the columns are written and the similarity of the name that this is Starchus M. Spencer. The other contributor signs his name “Num Skull.” We are never given a clue as to the identity of Num Skull. In these bi-monthly columns, both of these authors garner a lot of information about the people, the area, and the climate of Plum Grove and its vicinity.
A splendid little rain fell on the 27th, but too late to help the corn crop any. The hay crop in this locality is very scarce and short. Corn cutting is the business of the farmer just now. The corn crop is very light in this locality, not more than half a crop this season.
👉🏻 Stark Spencer and his wife arrived home last Saturday.
👉🏻 Mrs. M. C. Snort is very sick.
👉🏻 Henry Bickness has been adding quite an improvement to his building, a front porch with a cellar under it.
👉🏻 Thos. Reams starts in a few days for Iowa.
👉🏻 Mr. Cline and family start for Missouri next week.
👉🏻 Mr. Woodward of Newton is putting up hay below town on the Whitewater to winter 295 head of cattle this winter.
👉🏻 Elmer Ashenfelter is to teach the Plum Grove school this winter.
👉🏻 I. A. Shriver has many portable corn cribs to sell; he says his corn stalks won’t fatten them.
👉🏻 I guess J. B. Morton has been looking over the country some to see what his chances are for moving to ElDorado after the election this fall.
👉🏻 Several farmers are breaking sod for the English landholder who bought all the railroad land in Milton township.
👉🏻 John Daily’s brother arrived last Friday; he is just from the land of wooden nut-megs.
Yours,
Plum Grove
𝚨nything for A Quiet LifeΩ 