Saline County Century Farm: Kile farm as old as county

Pictured is Elizabeth Margaret Williamson Kile with daughters Clara Bell Kile Guthrey (in front) and Mollie Sue Kile Huyett.
(Contributed photo)

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When the Guthrey family, who own the farm, were handed their plaque at the Saline County Century Farm ceremony in November, they were surprised to see the date listed as 1820.

Betty McCann, one of the farm's owners, works in the Saline County recorder's office and had helped other farm owners certify their farms.

Although the family doesn't know which family members are shown in the picture, they are in front of the original log cabin of the Kile family. The home was built on a ledge above the Missouri River bottoms. Records show the family owned the ground since 1820, and moved to the land around 1830, coming down the Ohio River on a raft.
(Contributed photo)

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"So I called the University of Missouri extension office in Columbia and said, 'If we can find that it is at least 100 years old on these plat maps, can we certify the plat maps?'" she explained, adding the office gave permission to certify the maps.

Although they knew it had been in the family for much longer than 100 years, the Guthrey family also used plat maps for the Century Farm recognition.

"I took the short route, too. I certified the plat maps. I think it was 1876," said Betty.

The Kile family owned the ground where the Bluff School was built. The school still stands on the family ground, although they are unsure whether it is this original building. This picture was taken around 1912.
(Contributed photo)

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"When they put that on the sign, I said, 'Betty, we better have some documentation for that," said her brother Kile Guthrey, another of the farm owners. Kile said he has a territorial $20 bill, passed down from the family, in a safety deposit box. The bill may indicate the family was in the territory before statehood.

Since the ceremony, Betty has gone through documents from her family and has found additional documentation that their great-great- grandfather was granted the farm by the government a year before Missouri became a state in 1821.

John Kile was born in 1783 in Rockingham County, Va., and married Susannah Van Meter, daughter of Isaac Van Meter and Rebecca Wright of Pickaway County, Ohio. According to documents, the couple moved to their farm in 1830, from Franklin County, Ohio, traveling down the Ohio River on a raft. A bed they brought with them is still in use.

After arriving, they built a log cabin on a "ledge" of the farm, located above the bottom, but underneath the bluff.

"They lived on this intermediate area between the bluff and the bottoms because number one, it offered better protection from the elements, because there was this bluff on one side and then (number) two, you wouldn't get flooded because it was higher," explained Betty.

Kile Guthrey, who now lives in a house on the bluff, just above the remains of the log cabin, said another reason they built there was a year-round fresh spring.

"There is a spring down there that shoots a stream of water. It never freezes over in the winter and never stops running a stream. You can hear it," he said. In fact, he still doesn't have to cut ice in the winter for the cattle on the land.

"I don't need to," he said. "They go down to the spring."

There were also several outbuildings near the house, which also was added onto later. The log house burned at some point, although they don't know the date. The family then moved to a lot in Miami, where McCann still lives.

Below the house and outbuildings was a barn, which is also gone.

"I remember it as a little kid, putting hay in it (and) it was old then," said Kile.

Although the barn is lower than the house, it is still on a little higher ground. When the flood of 1993 came, said Charles Guthrey, another of the owners, the foundation where the barn once stood, stayed above the water, although most of the bottom ground was covered.

Susannah and John Kile had eleven children, although only four married.

Their son, Isaac (1819-1890), inherited the homestead and purchased more land nearby. In 1840, he married Elizabeth Williamson Davis. She was the widow of Tom Davis, with whom she had a daughter, Virginia Davis.

Isaac and Elizabeth had four children, including two boys who died young. The couple also raised two orphan children, including a boy, Francis Johnson.

"There used to be river people who came up and down the river, and they were kind of like migrant workers," explained Betty, who said the families had tar paper shacks built on the rafts. One of the families apparently had ten children and couldn't afford all of them.

"(Isaac and Elizabeth) took in two of them," said Betty.

A family recounting said Francis later moved to California and worked as a manager for a branch of the Moline Plane Company.

After Isaac died in 1880, one daughter inherited a farm, which is now located on the other side of Highway F near Miami. It was eventually sold to another family.

The Guthrey's grandmother, Clara Bell Kile (1872-1965) inherited the 320 acres the family still owns.

When she was 30 years old, she married John G. Guthrey, Jr., the son of a Miami banker.

Betty said her great-grandmother, Elizabeth, "ruled the roost."

"To the point where she didn't approve too much of my grandfather, because he could not do a hard day's work, she thought. He was a banker's son," said Betty. "He didn't have any calluses on his hand, that was her first clue."

"That was one reason she didn't marry until after she was 30."

They do remember their grandmother, Clara Bell, who was 92 when she died; however, they were very young, so didn't get to hear a lot of stories.

"My grandmother always worked hard, but broke her hip at age 78, chasing a chicken," said Betty. By that time she lived in Marshall in a home on a large lot near the corner of Eastwood and Lincoln. Even though they lived in Marshall, they had a pasture with three cows, chickens, a large garden and "sometimes a horse." After that accident she was an invalid until her death.

John Guthrey rented out the farm to tenant farmers, while the family lived in Miami. He also owned and managed ground from his family.

"My grandmother knew farming. He didn't do too much on her land, without her approval," said Betty.

They also remembered something else their grandmother had told them.

"My grandmother said her father always said the farm was self- contained. You could raise your cows, you could cut your wood and not have to go outside the farm and you had your gardens," she said.

Clara Bell and John had three children, Elizabeth, John Garnett III and Kile Palmore Guthrey.

Kile Palmore graduated from Missouri Valley College and married another MVC graduate Harriet Hoge. He was a salesman, school bus driver, seed corn dealer, mayor of Miami and farmed the family ground, beginning in 1948.

His four children were Elizabeth Margaret (Betty), Kile P. Jr., Charles, and James, who died in a car accident in 1975.

The four were raised on the farm in a "tenant" house, which originally had four rooms. It was built in the 1920s, and is still located on the farm, next to the Bluff School House, which is also still standing on the family property.

"When Miami (school district) consolidated, my dad had to buy the building, because it was on our land," said Betty.

The Guthreys remember farming the ground when they were young. They raised hogs, chickens, cattle, along with wheat and corn, many of the same crops their great-grandfather had raised. They remembered plowing the bottom with a small two-bottom plow and small tractors.

They said their great-great grandfather and great-grandfather plowed the ground with horses and pull-type plows.

"That bottom ground down there is tight gumbo -- I don't see how they had animals pulling it," said Kile. "And look, " Kile said, showing one of the family photographs. "No levee, the river could get up there any time."

Although John Kile was the first settler to own the ground, a University of Missouri archaeological dig in the 1970s turned up a skeleton and a huge garbage pit from Indians who lived there in an earlier time.

"From the size of the pit, they thought it was a sizeable tribe," said Kile.

Kile Guthrey farmed the ground until 1987, he said, but now the crop ground is rented out.

Betty, Kile and Charles now own the farm, along with their aunt, Valeta Guthrey of Iowa, and cousin, John Garnett Guthrey IV, of Pennsylvania.

"The thing my dad was always proudest of -- the farm was never mortgaged, neither one of them," said Betty, noting that was true even though it had been owned through several wars and the Depression.

The other farm her father was referring to, also a Century Farm, will be featured in next week's article.

Contact Marcia Gorrell at marshallag@socket.net