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Note: Harley's childhood was not easy. In 1900 the brothers were living in another houshold. Mattie had divorced his father George, the town drunk. His brother Ode became a profession bartender and Bill a successful farmer. Bill was a big, jovial, fair-haired man and Ode was very solemn.
Harley was very entrepeneurial. His ice biz was the favorite and he kept it too long after refrigerators. He had a poultry house and shipped to Indianapolis. When the depression killed commodities, he lost three farms with liens. He then homesteaded some worthless property down the hill from the old Sherfick place. I rode his horse while he tried to get the plow through sassafras roots the first summer. Next year he had a team and farmed land over the hill. His brother Bill leased him some bottom land for a corn crop.
Getting elected Sheriff a second time got him out of the rut and Ibbie fed the prisoners. The county jail had three cells and I sentenced brother Joe there in high complaint. After that office term he bought a farm across from the state forest, high above Willow Valley and Beaver Creek. A perfect little one room schoolhouse was across the road that had been donated by Ibbie's grandfather James Johnson -- desks and everything just as the last day of school. It was demolished by the gypsum company along with the farm buildings for a truck staging area. He raised 3000 turkeys there and later changed to poultry. The land was too acid to farm. The gypsum company bought him out cheaply, but Ibbie managed a small house in Bedford to retire. Tobacco finally destroyed his lungs after years of a hacking cough.
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