Great Grandpa Baltzell, my father’s maternal grandfather, was a family icon. He was born on December 20, 1856, and died on February 13, 1956. He was President of the Indiana Sheep Association and, at one time, took approximately 300 sheep to Belgium and England for sale. He later served a term as County Auditor.
The family’s lore indicates that he was on his own at age 10, probably because his father was in the Civil War. His mother was Rebecca Jane Ruby and his father was John Baltzell. He married Emma Jane Andrews.
He built a large barn that carried his name, Thomas A. Baltzell, and the words Shropshire Sheep and Berkshire Hogs. As a young child I asked what the “H” in the name on the barn stood for and nobody seemed to know. It was either Huffman or Hoffman but that nobody knew for sure. The local newspaper had it as Huffman but Ancestry.com has it as Hoffman.
My dad was not sure when the barn was built, but knew it was sometime prior to 1900. I am not sure how he made that calculation. It was 20 feet high to the square, 40 feet wide, and 80 feet long east to west. It did not have a concrete floor but was built on stone pillars such that the east end was approximately one foot above the ground level while the west end was at grade. There were several horse stalls on the east end that were created when large planks, approximately 20 feet long, two feet wide and four inches thick, were placed close but not touching each other to create a slatted floor, which held the manure in place but let the urine pass below, keeping the horses dry.
Just to the west of the horse stalls was another raised platform made in a similar manner. Several years of large corn harvests called for use of that area to hold corn. When I was a junior in high school, dad decided to sell corn that had been stored in that area, about two semi loads. The semi driver had a young Black man, about 20 years old, help scoop the corn, and dad had hired my cousin, Max Beer, as senior, to help me scoop as well. After we loaded the first semi and the driver left, the driver’s assistant and Max and I decided to have a wrestling match. Since the other man was older, Max and I teamed up.
He took us both, much to our surprise. When both Max and I remarked about his strength, he also noted that he had great agility. To prove his point, he claimed he could stand on his head on the top haymow beam some 20 feet in the air. Needless to say, we had to call his bluff. Although he was certainly strong, this feat would be impossible.
Rising to the challenge, the young man climbed the ladder to the top beam, a 12-by-12-inch, 40-foot timber, running north to south at the edge of the haymow. He promptly stood on his head. Then, to make sure we were duly impressed, he slowly allowed his feet to fall away from the haymow and landed on his feet some 20 feet below!
The haymow was full of loose hay. Its floor was about eight feet above grade and I often wondered if he had intended to fall into the hay but there was no evidence that, in fact, that was his plan.
The haymow was about 20 percent full of hay that at one time had been baled, and which, over time, was no longer in the position to be moved. Father and I restacked hay clumps and bound them with twine to bring them back to the homeplace to feed cattle.
As you can imagine, the old barn held other items of interest to me in my growing-up years. It had many tools of days gone by, such as a corn sheller, horse harness, and other items that to this day, I still cannot identify. Grandma Theresa Adler recounted the memory of her childhood when the barn was filled to the peak with loose hay, which was later baled. That would be more than 8,000 cubic yards of hay to feed his sheep.