Family keeps farm and memories alive despite prediction

The John Shannon Farm, located southeast of Marshall, was recognized along with 15 other farms during the Century Farm celebration held Nov. 14 at the Saline County Courthouse. The farm, has been in the Shannon family since 1888. From left are: Carter Shannon, Dora Alice Shannon, Randy Shannon, Mabel Harvey, Vicki Shannon, Sherry Werneke, Sheila Cook, Adrianna Werneke (and behind the others, Bill Werneke). (Marcia Gorrell/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Now, 35 years later, his three children, Earl Shannon, Mabel Harvey and Carter Shannon, have kept the farm in the family. Recently, 40 acres of the farm, located southeast of Marshall, was named a Century Farm for being in the same family for 100 years or more.

His home, which at the time of his death still didn't have an indoor bathroom, was not torn down as he feared, but instead is the core part of a modern home now owned by his grandson, Randy Shannon, and wife, Vicki.

Press had lived in the home for most of his life. His father, John Shannon, and mother, Margaret Lawler Shannon, purchased 170 acres in 1888, moving to the home on the farm in October 1888, when Press was just 6 months old.

But when Press was just 5 years old, his father passed away. Margaret stayed in the home, raising five children and three stepchildren, apparently surviving by selling off parts of the original 170 acres.

In 1909, just six months after he married Lillie Shackelford Shannon, Press and his new bride moved into the home with his mother. Lillie lived in one room, which is now her great-grandson Randy's bedroom.

"Grandma Shannon did not do any cooking. She came out for all meals and did all the dishes," said Mabel. "Her daughters and daughters-in-law brought their patching and they brought their vegetables for her to break the beans and hull the limas."

It was shortly after Margaret's death in 1937 that the remaining farm was split up among her children and stepchildren. It was then that Press started an almost "heroic" effort to put the farm back together, buying pieces back from his siblings.

"He began the process of pulling it all under his wing," said Randy. However, he said, it took years and years to do that.

"That was probably the reason that he stipulated in his will that his three children could not do anything (about selling the farm) for 10 years after his death, unless all three of them agreed to do it," said Randy.

Mabel said she remembers going through the Depression years on the farm, adding that it was not easy, but because they had an orchard, a large garden and livestock, they weathered it better than some of the neighbors.

"We had food, because we had a garden," she said. "All of the family came home there and we did the butchering in the winter, and I remember the getting up early and dad getting the water started under the scalding box and his brothers and sisters came home and did their butchering there."

She also remembers when the families would come together to render lard and make apple butter.

"Dad always cooked the apple butter up in the back yard. One of the cousins from Minnesota has the copper kettle they cooked the apple butter in," she said.

"We always had a little orchard and had peaches and apples and damsons and cherries and all the relatives and neighbors came and picked," she said.

"That's the reason, during the Depression it was not easy but I think we weathered a little bit better than a lot of the neighbors all around us," she said.

They also remember the time coming out of the Depression.

"I remember we were coming out of the Depression when I went to high school in 1936 and we had a box on the post down at the gate and Manor Bread would stop and leave us a loaf of bread for a nickel," said Mabel. "I don't know how we had the nickel."

She said she sees now how hard her mother had to work back then, with cooking, canning and making the family's clothes.

"I didn't have any boughten clothes until after the Depression."

Although Carter remembers farming with teams of horses, it isn't something he missed after they switched to tractors.

One of his memories involves running the "bundle wagon" hauling crops to the stationary thresher.

His father had high blood pressure and feared he might get dizzy and fall off the wagon, so Carter, starting around age 13, would drive the horses while his father stayed in the field, "pitching" the crops into the wagon.

"I ran the wagon to the thrash machine for years. That's why I always hated it because you had to get up real early and fool with the old horses, then you had to come in and fool with them at night," said Carter.

"You used to always tell me you'd feed them the oats and then they'd turn around and cough or something and spit them back in your face," laughed Randy, who said his dad always "hated horses" because he had to work with them when he was younger.

Although, he had a scholarship to what is now the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, where he planned to study electrical engineering, Carter decided to stay home from college to help his father keep the farm together.

"I felt like I needed to stay home," he said.

Soon after making that decision, they bought a tractor -- in 1946, the first Oliver tractor sold in Marshall.

"We gave $700 for the tractor, plow, disc and cultivator -- all brand new, right after the war," he said. It came with steel wheels, although they later put rubber tires on.

Carter said you could get stuck "in a minute" with the old tractors.

"I got it stuck in back of my house one day and Dad smoked a pipe," he said. "He got up and laid across the radiator to keep it from raising up."

He clutched the tractor and it raised up, then banged suddenly to the ground. "It bent his pipe stave off," he said laughing at the memory, which he said wasn't as funny at the time.

They still used the team of horses for a while until later selling them to a neighbor.

Carter said they raised oats, corn, wheat and baled hay. They also had Angus cattle, Hampshire hogs and dairy cows.

"When we started farming, we had all livestock on the 40 acres and the other 40 acres and the 16 acres is where we raised crops," said Carter. "If you had 50-bushel corn then you busted the corn crib. It was a different ballgame altogether. I don't know people lived on what we farmed then."

One of the fields still has clay tiles Carter and his father put in, digging by hand.

Carter said what amazed him about his father, Press, was that he had very little formal education, because he "crawled out of the window" at Shelby School in second or third grade and never went back.

"What I never could understand is my dad had no education, but he could read or spell better than anybody," he said. "He was self-educated. He could figure with you quicker than we could use a calculator. He was extremely good in math."

Their mother, they said, was also very intelligent, but she went through the eighth grade in school at Ridge Prairie and then took one year of post-eighth grade education near Longwood.

When receiving the Century Award, the family called it the John Shannon farm, because he was the original purchaser of the farm and that name has been passed on through the family, with his grandson John "Carter" Shannon, great- grandson John Randall Shannon, great-great-grandson Jonathan Chrisman Shannon and great-great-great-grandson John David Shannon.

"But John Shannon died a few years after acquiring the farm and it seems clear from a study of the abstract that Press Shannon is most responsible for holding the farm together and passing it on down to the next generation," said Randy.

Being recognized as a Century Farm is very important to the family, and they say they have made plans to keep it in the family.

Randy said as a child he always felt connected to something bigger than himself, because of the farm's history.

"When I was young I used to think of the farm as partially mine; in my child's mind I imagined that the land and everything under it in a wedge shaped piece that stretched to the center of the earth was Shannon land."

Randy hopes that someday his young grandson will feel the same way. "When John Shannon sees that Century Farm, he'll realize he's connected to something, just like I felt when I was a kid too," he said.

Contact Marcia Gorrell at marshallag@socket.net