McLEAN COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY NEWS
By Euleen Rickard
President Jim Hansford has given the museum “THE BLACKSMITH” an illustrated book on blacksmiths of colonial days. He inscribed it “To honor all the blacksmiths of McLean County---especially one that was our neighbor in the early 1940s-Wallace Lynn.” With Hugh Lynn, the son of Wallace he wrote remembrances of the days when his family, “the Roy Hansfords lived neighbors to the Lynn family in the Glenville area from January 1941 until May 1946.”
Jim recalled that “Mr. Lynn was a blacksmith who could built anything he set his mind to or was asked by someone to make.” He rebuilt an old wagon by applying axles etc. that fit regular auto wheels and tires, purposely making the bed lower to the ground.” He made long flat wagon bed that was designed for hay loading and fashioned a “ramp” for the back of the wagon that allowed a piece of farm equipment, disc, plow, drag etc. to be pulled upon the bed by a tractor. When the piece of equipment was securely roped or chained to the wagon bed a tractor pulled the loaded wagon from one farm to another.
“The Hansfords had a new 1940 rubber tired International Harvestor Farmall H tractor. It has a “5th gear (highway and road gear) that would go up to 16 miles per hour. Since most of the roads between the Hansford and Lynn farms were either blacktop or gravel it was mostly a “5th gear” trip and could be done in 20-25 minutes, a great savings of time over the standard slow speed of most tractors of that day.”
Jim wrote of those days, “Jim, thirteen years old at the time, did most of the driving of the tractor and when he saw some of his friends in the fields of their farms, Bob and Billy Hill, Maurice Magruder, S. B. Troutman, Franklin Fulkerson, Lucien Bristow etc. he would pretend that he was going to knock down their mailboxes.
Jim wrote that his dad told him “to be very respectful and quiet while he was in Wallace Lynn’s blacksmith shop and not to pick up and handle Mr. Lynn’s tools.” Through the years he visited, sometimes alone and sometimes with his dad, but always being very quiet and never touching anything. In 1946, just before he left for service, he was visiting Mr. Lynn “talking only a small bit” when Mr. Lynn asked, “why he was so quiet.” Jim replied that his dad had told him early on “to be very quiet in the shop and not to handle any tools.” Mr. Lynn said he knew Jim would be careful with the tools and told him “he could handle them any time he wanted.”
The Wallace Lynns had two sons Hugh Lee born January 30, 1921 and Elmer Ray Lynn born January 3, 1926. Jim remembers that in the summers of 1941,1942, 1943 (before he got his driver’s license) “he rode to Calhoun with Mr. and Mrs. Lynn (Mabel) and often times Elmer, every Wednesday night. Mr. and Mrs. Lynn went to shop and socialize in Calhoun. He and Elmer went to go to the movies at the Victory theatre. A movie cost 25cents, even the most famous movie.”
Wallace Lynn’s first blacksmith shop was built on Old Highway 81 about 1925. It burned and a second one was built about 1928. According to Hugh Lee Lynn “his grandfather Hugh Lynn learned his blacksmith trade from blacksmith Jesse Jackson and his father Wallace learned the trade from his grandfather.” He said “the coming of electricity to the blacksmith shop was like a miracle-so many things were done easier and faster. One of Wallace Lynn’s favorite tools was a 3 ½ horse power electric motor that he obtained from REA (Rural Electric Association) about 1937.”
Hugh Lee Lynn has donated to the museum pruning shears that Mr. Wallace Lynn himself made. We are pleased to have them and they are on display along with other old blacksmith and farm tools.