Frank Haight: Fergusons’ rich family history is worth sharing

“My love for the farm and the love of the farm life were very important to me,” writes John T. Ferguson, about his intriguing life that began in 1924 with his birth in an Eastern Jackson County house that his grandfather erected in 1891.

A copy of his remembrances were mailed to me with the following notation scribbled across the top of the typed manuscript: “Thought you would like to read this. I wrote this as history to my grandkids.”

Yes, John, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about your rich heritage and I am condensing your manuscript to share with my “Around Town” readers.

John’s story is that of a successful Jackson County farmer who also succeeded as a salesman for the Pioneer Seed Co. for 30 years – farming at night and selling insurance and renewing policies when he could. He was also an insurance salesman for Clay Farmers, in Napoleon, Mo., and Cameron (Mo.) Mutual.

“I have lived my life with my wife June for 65 years on the farm I was born on, in and next to the house my granddad and grandma built,” he writes, noting the history-rich area is best known for its “everlasting” spring and the Battle of the Little Blue, which John says was fought on his land during the Civil War.

John adds the fill dirt to build the U.S. 24 and Bundschu Road bridges across the Little Blue River came from the Ferguson farm, where his sister, Lorene, has also lived her whole life in her own house a short distance from the old family homestead.

“I had a great mother and father,” he writes. “(Parents) that didn’t tell you what to do; they just lived a good life by their actions – you knew what to do.”

John’s remembrances of the Great Depression are vivid ones. Though never hungry, the family’s hand-me-down clothing left much to be desired.

“We went to school with holes in our pants ... and we used cardboard to cover the holes in our shoes,” John recalls.

Looking back on his rich heritage, the 88-year-old retired farmer writes he was pleased to have been born in the old house his grandpa built in 1891, along with his older sister, Lorene, and younger brother, Keith, who died at age 7. John’s son, Steve, was also born there.

The old house was built on a 40-acre tract on the east side of Ferguson Spring Road, where an everlasting spring from a limestone bluff provided water for soldiers camped on the family farm during the Civil War.

John writes that when the old house was built by his grandpa, John R. Ferguson, Ferguson Spring Road was called the Old Lexington Road. It extended from Independence to Lexington, Mo., and crossed the covered bridge at the Little Blue River. It was deeded back to the farm years later, he recalls, adding: “At the time of the Battle of the Little Blue, (Old Lexington Road) was the main route. A part of Ferguson Spring Road is the same road.”

The Ferguson farm was expanded in 1934 when the family purchased an adjoining farm south of the original 40 acres. The purchase included a house and 120 acres.

John was uprooted for a while from the family as a teenager when his brother, Keith, became ill and was hospitalized at the Independence Sanitarium and Hospital.

To be closer to her seriously ill son, Mrs. Ferguson moved to Independence to live with relatives, taking John and his sister with her. John’s dad stayed on the farm.

John writes his mother walked about five blocks each day to the hospital to be closer to her son. As for the children, John attended Junior High School and Lorene, William Chrisman.

Following Keith’s death in December, the family moved back to the farm. John completed the eighth grade at Woodland School at U.S. 24 and Missouri 7, where Fort Osage High School is today. Even though he resided in the Buckner School District, John longed to attend William Chrisman High School in Independence and received permission to do so.

After graduating from Chrisman in 1943, John settled down on the farm to help his family earn enough money to pay the bills and to purchase groceries.

Says John: “Lorene, my sister, was out of school also helping my mother, as my mother and dad and I were milking cows and farming the original 40 acres and the 120 acres they had just purchased.”

With the outbreak of World War II, everyone was involved in the war effort in some way, he writes, with women working in defense plants and men serving in the military.

Unable to serve in the military because of an occupational deferment (work essential to the national defense), John writes: “It was very hard on us that were put in occupational deferment, as we were turned in to the draft board for not serving (in the military).

Not wanting to be thought of as a coward, John made an effort to get into the military after a woman who had been drinking embarrassed him in front of a large crowd in downtown Kansas City by scolding him for not wearing a military uniform.

“This bothered me, and I asked the draft board to send me to the Army,” he says. “They sent me ... to Leavenworth (Kan.) for a physical. I said the Marines was my preference. The board put me back in occupational (deferment).”

The war changed the lives of most people, including the Fergusons. June Dean, who married John after the war, served as a secretary in the management office at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant. Her fiancé was killed in the D-Day invasion of Normandy before reaching the beach.

Then there was Lorene, who worked at Lake City making ammunition. Her fiancé, a B-17 pilot, never returned home. His plane was shot down over Germany; his body was never recovered.

During the war, John romanced a girl in his high school class who had broken up with a Chrisman classmate. After a yearlong courtship, he proposed, she accepted and they decided to get married.

But there was one huge problem.

“Her mother did not like me, as I was a farmer and belonged to the ‘wrong’ church, so the mother ended that,” he writes.

John’s story, though, has a happy ending. As the war was winding down, he and June crossed paths for the first time in an ice cream shop on Independence Square, fell in love and tied the nuptial knot on Aug. 9, 1946.

Thanks, John for sharing your story. It’s sure to be a family bestseller.