Saline County Century Farm: Gauldins honored as owners of Century Farm

Martin Austin Gauldin liked to travel, according to his great-great-grandson David Gauldin, who now is the fifth generation to own a farm Martin purchased in 1869.

"I think he had itchy feet," said David, explaining that his great-great-grandfather even went to California during the Gold Rush days around 1850.

Martin arrived in Missouri from Virginia in 1838 after the death of his parents and eventually settled in Saline County.

In 1945, he took a trip to Texas.

"He came up here, and met Nancy Belle Kiser and she was a good deal younger than him, so he took a trip and went down there, and when he came back they were married," explained Betsy, David's wife.

"Yeah, they sent him off to cool his heels," laughed David.

A journal he wrote during his trip is now kept at the Texas State Capitol building in Austin. There is also a copy of the journal in Sedalia.

"My brother and his wife retraced his trail on vacation one time, and they went to Texas with it," explained David. It was then that people in the state capital asked to keep a copy of it.

"They said it described the land so well at that time, the way he had written it," said Betsy.

"Everyday he'd write this diary on the trail, and he'd tell how much he paid for oats and that," explained David.

On July 9, 1846, he married Nancy Belle, the daughter of Capt. Daniel Kiser, who had a farm south of what is now U.S. Highway 65.

As a wedding present, the couple received 160 acres near the "Kiser home place" and lived in an old house "on top of a hill" there.

In 1850, Martin traveled to California for the Gold Rush, spending about three years away. During the Civil War, he was a soldier and eventual prisoner, after being captured at Blackwater. He spent time in prison in St. Louis; Alton, Ill.; and Jefferson City.

Martin eventually purchased over 1,200 acres of farmland in the Stanhope and Malta Bend area. According to family history, as he got older he decided to split 1,000 acres of land among his 10 children, keeping 200 acres for himself and his wife.

His son, Edmund, inherited the 80-acre farm and built a house there around 1902. It is the same house David was born in and has lived in with Betsy since inheriting the farm in 1983. The farm was recently named a Century Farm for being in the same family for 100 years or more.

"Edmund Gauldin had two children, Elizabeth and Claude," explained David. Claude was David's grandfather, but Elizabeth, whose son died from the flu during World War I, inherited this farm.

"Dad farmed the place for her, and she sold the place to my dad," explained David. His parents, Alva C. and Sarah Kiser Gauldin, raised their seven children in the home. David was the youngest.

The railroad came through the farm in 1888 and three acres, which were purchased later, were plotted to be part of the town of Stanhope. At one time the town had an alfalfa mill, depot, stockyards, two section houses, a store and a house across the road from the Gauldin home.

"That was Stanhope, but it never grew," said David.

Although the farm is now all in one field, Gauldin said he remembers when the 80-acre farm was divided into eight different fields.

Part of it was a baseball field where the Stanhope Red Horses, a neighborhood team of teenagers and young adults, played games against other small communities.

Another part of the farm was a gun club, where they shot trap, that included two skeet houses.

"I saw the world champion ... Lela Hall shoot there one time," he said. The range shut down during World War II, when there was no longer any ammunition available. Later, the clubhouse was used as a shop on the farm.

The rest of the farm was divided into fields, lots and pastures. They raised dairy and beef cattle, hogs, chickens, turkey, ducks and rabbits.

Gauldin said he remembered his mother would "get the hook" and grab five or six chickens and gather eggs and cream and "throw them in the trunk."

They would then go to FM Stampers (now ConAgra) in Marshall and sell the commodities.

"I remember we'd go in the front door at Stampers and then she'd take that money and go to town and get groceries," he said.

David said he got started driving tractors on the farm because his older brothers wouldn't want to take the steel-wheeled tractors on the rock roads.

"That's how a little kid got to drive a tractor, when they'd move it on country roads. Those old ones didn't want to ride that rough-riding thing so they'd put you on there and you could jiggle your guts out on a rock road and you were willing to do it," he said.

Although he wanted to "farm his whole life," and earned the FFA State Farmer Degree, David went into the plumbing and well-digging business, one of the jobs his father also did. His older brothers Buzz and Charles, farmed the land with their father.

"My two brothers and I helped them and dad until I was 17," he explained. "Charles and Buzz told me I was going to have to stay in the waterworks because there wasn't enough ground to farm."

He said they had two teams of horses on the farm, but purchased a Farmall F20 tractor some time around 1938.

"They farmed with that F20 clear up to 1955," David said. "They wound up getting a 2-row International corn picker and put it permanent on the F20," he said.

He also recalled that around 1938, his brother and father farmed over 300 acres of row crops, including one 100-acre field.

"Dad got a car generator and a battery and car headlights and put them on the tractor," David said, explaining that the three then did three eight-hour shifts each day running the tractor.

"It was something like three weeks that engine never cooled off, except to stop for gas and change the oil. Then they finally got a rainout," he said.

They also were the first to have a four-row planter, when his father took two 2-row Blackhawk horse-drawn corn planters and mounted them on the F20.

"He was a big farmer, he wasn't going to get it done if he didn't," he said.

At that time, before they planted the field they had to plow it, disk it and then harrow it. They had a "312" he said, explaining it was a 3-bottom, 12-inch plow.

"You put that in a 100-acre field and it was about like eating soup with a fork," he said. They also had an 8-foot-wide tandem disk and 10 foot straight disk.

"Then you double cut (overlapped), so you took five feet when you disked with the straight disk," he said.

"You plowed it, you disked it and you harrowed it," he said. "If it didn't look like a garden spot, you wasn't farming," he explained.

He said the way ground is farmed today, with minimal tillage, would have been called "hogging it in."

"If someone had done like they planted today, you wouldn't have rented a farm next year," he said, adding that someone who was a good fence builder would also have a better chance at renting farms.

"Now to be good at farming, you got to be good at tearing (fences) out, because you got to farm the roadbank too," he laughed. "Used to be fence row to fence row, now you farm that, too."

David also remembered when his brother did the first "contour" farming in the area, planting along the hill, instead of down the hill.

"We had one field that had an Indian camp on it at one time. You'd plant corn on it, and after each big rain, it would wash out arrowheads and everything. Dad would give us a hoe and nail aprons with seed corn in it, and we'd go over and take a hoe and replant corn," he explained.

But when his dad came home and saw the contour planting, he wasn't very happy about it.

"Well you know, we didn't have to replant any corn that year, and it was never planted downhill again," he said. "That was the first contour, but dad had no part."

David and Betsy raised their children, Beth Kyle, now of Cole Camp; Denny Jones of Sedalia; and Kirk Gauldin of Illinois state, in a home just below their current home.

"I moved around a lot," Gauldin joked. They moved into the house in 1953, shortly after marrying, and lived there until moving into their current home in 1983.

The ground is now farmed by the seventh generation, Jeremy Boedeker, Gauldin's great-nephew.

Contact Marcia Gorrell at marshallag@socket.net