Country Facts and Folklore
By Andy Reddick

SOLVING A PROBLEM WITH A NEIGHBOR

1895 was in the middle of Grover Cleveland’s second term. As you may remember, he is the only president to serve a term, lose an election to someone else (Benjamin Harrison), then return again as president for another term. He served from 1885-1889, then from 1893-1897, with Harrison sandwiched between his terms.

This Democrat faced a severe depression during his second term, brought on by a lowered gold reserve. He managed a complete tariff reform that helped the economy recover.

Cinematographe was patented in 1895, the first type of film to process motion pictures. The first film that year, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, was made in France in March. The Lumiere brothers coined the word "cinema," with the first projected film shown to an audience.

D.D. Palmer of Davenport, Iowa, delivered the first chiropractic adjustment of the spine to Harvey Lillard on September 18th, allegedly restoring his hearing and founding what would become the largest licensed non-medical doctorate level health care profession in the U.S.

Not too far away, in Wapello, Louisa County, Andrew Jackson Reddick married Laura N. Bradley on February 7. Only three days prior she had turned 17, and he would turn 23 in about 3 weeks. They made their home in Louisa County and began rearing a large family.

My father was the first of ten children born to the couple. Louis Jackson Reddick came into this world on November 4, 1895 just outside Wapello.

In 1916, the A. J. Reddick family moved to Keosauqua, and on November 24 the last of ten children was born and named Laura Evangeline Reddick. She married Darrell Loeffler and lived most of her life in the Keosauqua vicinity.

At the time they were married, A. J. Was working as a section hand on the railroad for about $1/day. He was a member of the Woodsmen of the World and the International Order of Odd Fellows. He played the banjo and violin a little. He would laugh and say he was playing banjo music for the mice to dance by. He never gambled, but liked to play "Hearts." He was a kind hearted man who never turned away a hungry person from his door….thus he fed salesmen, gypsies, bums or tramps, and many relatives who arrived unexpected.

Grandpa and Grandma once had a neighbor whose chickens kept getting into their garden. They asked the neighbor several times to keep their chickens fenced, but they paid no attention. Grandpa came up with a devious plan. He asked his wife for a dozen eggs.

Each night he would go out and plant the dozen eggs near the property line. Each morning he would just happen to go out egg hunting when his neighbor was outside, and would just happen to spy about a dozen "fresh eggs," which he delightfully displayed. After several days, his neighbor put up a fence!

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Contributed to the Van Buren Co. IAGenWeb Project by Andy Reddick
http://iagenweb.org/vanburen/