Reuben White again

Saturday on my way to Moscow I stopped here, across the road from the Convis township hall. It’s a place where I had stopped once before, on a Thanksgiving Day ride in 2006. I couldn’t remember the name of the person, a militia veteran of the Black Hawk war, who had farmed here years afterward, but it never hurts to get another photo.

I took my photo and headed back to my bike on the other side of the road. A man came out of the house, yelling at me, asking why I was taking pictures. I went back to explain and ask if it was OK with him. He was an older man, in overalls, with a big white beard somewhat stained with yellow. It took some time to explain. It didn’t help that I couldn’t even remember the name of the man who made me interested in his place.

We ended up talking for a while about this and that — our gardens, woodchucks, deer, the township hall, old houses, roads we both knew about. He explained that his parents had bought this place in 1949 and that he grew up here. Later in life he came back and bought the place from his parents. He recalled that when he was a little boy, sometimes a car would stop along the road and three old people would get out to look around. They would look at some of the trees (still standing in the yard) and point to this or that one, saying they had planted it. His mother would go out and talk to them and invite them into the house. They would talk about how this room had been for the hired man, that wall didn’t used to be there before, and so on.

He didn’t know their names, but later, I got to wondering whether they were descendents of Reuben White, the old militia veteran, who had lived here. (I remember his name now, because I looked it up.) Perhaps the house had even been built by him.

According to a county atlas of 1916, a White (R.G. White) still owned the place at that time. The land could have been sold to another family in the 33 years between 1916 and 1949, but it could very well have been the same family, too, especially given that elderly people of the appropriate age apparently remembered living there when young.

Usually I look for old county atlases, the older the better. But now I need to find some newer ones, for the period between 1916 and 1949, to see if this land was still in the White family.

I told the gentleman I was talking to that I could come back some time on another ride, with the information and maps I had about the old owners of this property. Now that I’ve thought about it some more, I definitely want to do that this summer. It’s less than 20 miles away, just right for a Sunday afternoon ride.

I thought of asking to take his photo while I was there, but didn’t. I hadn’t brought any of my release forms with me, anyway. Maybe next time.

Who knows, I may have been talking to someone who remembered seeing the grandchildren of Reuben White, who had served in the militia during the Black Hawk war. They may have been people who were old enough to have remembered their grandfather. I get a kick out of connections like that, so find it worth looking into further.

Before I took off to continue my ride, the man asked me a lot of questions about my bicycle touring, the gear I carried, and so on. It was a good roadside visit.