Plum Grove Items

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 submitted mainly 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 character that this is Starchus M. Spencer. The other contributor signs his name “Num Skull.” Unfortunately, we are never given a clue as to the identity of Num Skull. In these bi-monthly columns, both authors garner a lot of information about the people, the area, and the climate of Plum Grove and its vicinity

PLUM GROVE ITEMS.

01 SEPT 1881, Fri

Plum Grove and Vicinity.

Editor Gazette: After a long delay, I again come to the front with a few items:
Farmers are almost done plowing for wheat and making hay, and quite a good many of us are waiting to get our grain threshed for seed. Unfortunately, the machines are three or four weeks behind their engagement. Nevertheless, wheat is yielding from eight to eighteen bushels per acre.

☞ Wm. Hunter’s little boy, about five years old, fell from a horse and broke
his arm.
☞ A. Kennedy is quite sick. He is here to sow wheat, preparatory to returning to his farm this fall.
☞ H. D. Olinger has been recently ill but is around again.
☞ Mrs. T. H. Ferrier has sold her farm to T. L. Ferrier.
Mrs. Ferrier then left on a Monday visit to her old home in Pennsylvania to be gone for six or eight weeks.
☞ Mr. Asa White has sold his farm to Wm. Blattman, of Marion county,
has gone up near Topeka.
☞ John Daily and the Josephs are having a terrible time lawing over some prairie grass. Come up this way, John; hay is plenty up here.
☞ J. C. Olinger has a field of ninety acres of corn on the “poor upland” that would make a hungry hog’s mouth water. He planted early and without stirring the ground. It is by fur the best piece of corn in the neighborhood.

NUM SKULL.