The Chariton Herald’s Pleasant Township correspondent was running a little late as the new year, 1889, dawned out in the wilds of far northeast Lucas County. As a result, his or her account of the box social that had drawn the neighborhood together on New Year’s night wasn’t published until Jan. 17. We don’t know who the correspondent was, only that the author signed off as “Occasional.”
It sounds like a pleasant gathering, well attended. If 26 box dinners were sold there must have been at least 50 adults crowded into the one-room school then located in Section 29. If “Occasional” is to be believed, the only other nearby entertainment in the area that long-ago January was a protracted meeting at Zion M.E. Church, a mile and a quarter northeast across the hills. The series was being by the Rev. S. Farlow. “How long it will continue I am unable to state,” Occasional wrote.
Here’s the box social report:
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An old saying is that “it is better late than never,” and so I will try to give you an account of our Box Supper at Centennial School house in Pleasant Township on New Years night.
The supper was gotten up by the school which is being successfully taught by Wm. Gillaspey of Chariton. Each lady brought a box filled with a variety of good things to eat, enough for two persons. Tickets bearing numbers corresponding to numbers on the boxes were placed in a hat and drawn out by the gentlemen in turn, each one being required to pay 25 cents and eat its contents with the lady owner of the box bearing the number corresponding to the one drawn by him from the hat.
Uncle John Smith, who is about 70 years old, had the fun of eating with a young lady of 16 to the utter disgust of some of the young gentlemen who were in hopes of drawing the lucky number inscribed on her box.
There was a large and merry crowd present to enjoy the fun, though there were only 26 boxes brought in by as many ladies, the proceeds amounting to $6.50. As many more boxes might have been sold if they had been brought in. The visitors as well as the participants enjoyed the fun and all went home happy.
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I’ve annotated the map that locates both school and church, but some of the places noted didn’t exist in 1889, or for that matter in 1896 when the map was published. Williamson Pond, for example, was not built until 1913 when it was constructed to provide water for the steam-powered Rock Island locomotives passing through the nearby town of Williamson, which didn’t exist either in 1889 or 1896 (although a post office called Gunwald was located there).
The Olmitz and Tipperary mines weren’t developed until 1913 and later either, and the Olmitz post office still was located where it had been planted originally, north of Zion Church on the David Fluck farm (the Flucks by mutual agreement later all became Flukes, a less troublesome moniker).
When the Tipperary and Olmitz mines opened, the post office was transferred into the valley southeast of Zion Church to serve the newly built mining camp that had taken the name of the old rural post office.
The Olmitz camp grounds in Fluck (or Fluke) Grove, scene of many holiness gatherings and renowned as the formative site of the Fire-baptized Holiness Association, remained in place at the top of the hill, however. But that's a story for another day.
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