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By Donna Farley
Daily American Republic
Along the twisting roads surrounding Poplar Bluff, three area families have managed to make the demanding work of farming profitable for more than 100 years.
The ancestors of these families may not have ever met, but they all left a lasting mark on the history of Butler County.
They were people who had the courage to leave everything they knew in a time long before cell phones and road maps, without any sort of where they would end up.
These men and women not only settled farms but also helped build communities.
Each year the Missouri Centennial Farm program, run by the University of Missouri, recognizes farms that are more than a century old, have at least 40 acres of original land and make a financial contribution to the overall farm income. More than 3,000 farms have been recognized by the program, 250 last year.
The following farms are registered as centennial farms with the University of Missouri Extension office in Poplar Bluff.
The Collins Farm
By the late 1870s, when William Collins, 43, and his wife, Louisa, 38, settled a few acres just north of Hilliard, they had already spent time in several states.
No one knows why the former Union Army corporal and his wife decided to leave Claiborne, Tenn., where they were born, or why they finally decided to stay in Poplar Bluff.
The couple had eight children when they moved to Missouri and would have two more before William died in 1884. The couple’s last child would be born and die the same year as William.
James Collins was 22 when his father died and, as the oldest son, likely took over the farm. He was also an active member of the community, serving on the local school board for a number of years.
This ended sometime around 1900 when dynamite exploded in James’ hands while he was working on the St. Francis River. The accident, which his brother Lee witnessed, left James crippled and blind. James would live with Lee until James’ death in 1945. Despite his disabilities, James continued to be involved with his young nieces and nephews and left a lasting impression on his neighbors.
“[James] knew a lot of religious songs,” said Ralph G. Freer, who married Letha, James’ niece, “My family lived two miles away and we could always hear him singing at night.”
James’ brothers, Lee, 29, and George, 22, took over the family farm after his accident. The boys’ mother Louisa also would live with Lee until her death in 1915.
The Collins brothers, as Lee and George became known, built a two story family home in 1900 and turned a smaller building, which may have been the family’s first home, into a general store.
“The general store became important to the community,” said Ralph W. Freer, Letha’s son, “It was the center. It eclipsed the farm, though the farm was still important.”
Lee married a woman named May sometime before 1910. The couple would have five children, including Letha Freer. All of the children were born in the two-story home the boys built. George married a woman named Stella around 1910. The couple moved into a smaller house just a few feet away from the family home.
The family grew soybeans, corn and black-eyed peas, as well as raising livestock and breeding horses. The farm was 300 acres at its peak in 1918. The Collins brothers also worked surrounding farms that they rented from local families.
Today, Ralph W. owns 91 of the original acres and takes hay from the fields in the summer.
Along with farming and the general store, the boys ran a blacksmith shop, held official positions in a local farmers education group and served on the school board.
“Together [George and Lee] were a dynamic team,” Ralph W. said, “They were enterprising fellows and dabbled in lots of different things.”
Lee, who once tried to patent a folding bed, also repaired clocks and watches in a tiny room he added on to the second floor of the family home.
“We kids weren’t allowed in there,” Letha remembers, “but I would sit on the step in the doorway and my father would let me get parts from a little box when he needed them.”
Lee also led the fight, with great effort and strong words when necessary, to bring postal and telephone service into the hills surrounding the Collins Store.
When Lee began, the families who shopped at his store had to travel into Poplar Bluff to pick up their mail, a trip that would have taken the entire day then. Lee eventually convinced the post office to deliver letters to Collins Store, where several mailboxes were placed around a large oak tree for the families in the area.
In 1925, Lee and his family moved to a new home a few miles down the road. The ground floor of the former family home then became the Collins Store. The first store building was then converted into the Pennell Publishing Company for time, used for storage later and eventually torn down.
Lee died in 1950, along with George’s wife Stella, who taught at Martin School. George died in 1965.
The Collins family ran the store until 1978. The store was listed as a point of reference on maps of the Poplar Bluff area.
Both the Collins Store and George’s home still stand. When Ralph W. took over the property he began the long process of stabilizing and restoring the homes. With a lot of work left, Ralph W. now uses George’s home to create art pieces that will be shown in galleries in Poplar Bluff and Cape Girardeau. The Collins Store building has been restored on the outside and the ground floor is being used for storage until other work can be done.
The Gibbs Farm
Henry Frederick Funke was the son a German immigrant who settled in Cincinnati.
Funke left Ohio and eventually found his way to Missouri. Funke didn’t begin his time in Poplar Bluff as a farmer; his family believes that he worked a still with another man until the late 1880s.
He married a woman named Jennie and the first of seven children was born in 1897. Their second child was born in 1899.
In September of 1900, all the age of 37, Funke decided he needed work more fitting to the life of a family man.
Funke paid his former partner $1,000 for a 160-acre farm on what is now County Road 523, northwest of Poplar Bluff. Funke used 80 acres for pasture and crops.
The property came with Nunn Cemetery, which dates back to well before the 1900s and is still used today by some of the older families in town, said Mary Gibbs, who is descended from Funke’s Daughter Bernice.
Funke built a house and barn when his growing family moved onto the property. Gibbs believes that the barn she uses today is probably the one Funke built.
The Funkes raised their children in the original house until it burned down just prior to 1925.
“My mother used to say she could look through the floor boards,” Gibbs said, “and see chickens running under the house.”
Gibbs believes her parents and grandparents must have been made of very hardy stock.
“My mother said that her brother would sleep on the screened in porch,” Gibbs said, “covered with a tarp and in the winter would wake up covered in snow.”
In 1925, the Funke family built the house that Gibbs shares with her husband today.
“It was actually two houses that they tore down and combined,” Gibbs said, “You can tell because in places the molding will go from two inches to six inches. They were not master craftsmen but this house is pretty sturdy.”
Bernice married and moved to Detroit, where her husband found work. Funke died in 1938. Jennie and her son Ralph continued to farm the land after his death and Bernice would bring her daughters to visit during the summers.
“This has always been a special place,” Gibbs said, “We had so much fun when we’d come in the summers. There wasn’t electricity, just dim lights from a generator. And grandma had a big old pump organ. My uncle liked to tell ghost stories while we kids would play creepy music.”
Jennie died in 1963. Gibbs followed her father back to Missouri after his retirement. When her father died, Gibbs and her husband took over the family home.
Today, sisters Mary Gibbs and her husband now raise horses on the land. The horses are still in the experimental stage, Gibbs said, but they plan on breeding more.
The Elliott Farm
Henry Benjamin Franklin Elliott moved his for children from Sandy Hook to Poplar Bluff in October of 1903.
His wife Ida and their fifth child had died due to complications from childbirth.
The family believes that Henry left Sandy Hook because of a dispute over the sale of two horses. They believe the argument may have gotten out of hand and led to another man’s death.
“[Henry] remarried after Ida died. The kids didn’t like the woman and they divorced,” Delane Elliott, wife of Henry’s great-grandson Marty, told a DAR reporter in 2003. “During that time [Henry] sold a man two horses. The man never paid him and they actually had a shootout. The other man was killed. After that, [Henry] sold his farm and left looking for a new life.”
With $3,000 that he carried in a tobacco sack, Henry bought 200 acres west of the Black River from A.W. Davidson served as mayor of Poplar Bluff for a time and practiced medicine until the mid-1920s.
The farm included a five-room house, an old barn built during the Civil War and other buildings.
The property also held a church and a cemetery, where A.W. Davidson was later buried with five wives.
The church, which also served as a school, was the location of the first Black River Baptist Church until flooding forced it to be moved.
In 1905, Henry deeded the property to his daughter Jessie and sons George, Howard and Farrington. Henry returned to Sandy Hook, leaving his brother Bill to look after the children.
The family believes that Henry stood trial and might have served some time while he was gone. When he returned the property to him.
For many years, Henry’s neighbors didn’t mix with him much, thinking him strange and tough, his family said in 2003. This changed around 1908 when a neighbor, Charles Hillis, asked Henry not to farm the cemetery that has come with his land. Henry and Hillis became good friends after Henry agreed.
Henry farmed mostly corm and wheat with his sons, Farrington and Howard, until his death in 1925, at age 70.
Farrington had three children, Alma, Henry, who served in the Air Force, and Leroy, who served in the Army.
Today, Joan, the widow of Farrington’s son Henry, and the couple’s sons Brian and Marty own 70 of the original acres. The land is leased for crops and hay. None of the original buildings are still standing but the cemetery is still on the Elliotts’ land.
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