Farmer Gary and I recently attended what is now, I believe, an annual reunion of cousins on his mom’s side.

The two of us gave presentations to the group of 40 or so (mostly) retirees.

And no, for some reason I didn’t take photos. But there will be a video.

Here’s last year’s:

The cousins are the offspring of Mike and Rose Mehling’s progeny.

The photo below is from 1924, so Gary’s mom isn’t in it. Rita was born in 1926.

From left, we see Hilda. Irene, Rose holding baby Olivia, Mike, Jim, Hugo, and Al Mehling. Also missing from the picture is Henrietta, who was born in 1917 and, sadly, died in 1918.

For you city folk who might be wondering, they’re standing in front of a barn.

Gary’s presentation involved the land farmed and mined for coal by their grandfather Mike Mehling and great-grandfather Henry Schum over the years.

The oldest plat book we could find online was from 1879.

Someone sure had good handwriting back then. Even so, it gets hard to read with some names going east-west and others north-south.

Henry Schum had 160 acres (as outlined in yellow) in those early years. The land is in Spencer County, very close to Ferdinand in Dubois County.

Look to the right of the Schum farm; when Gary saw the 80 acres owned by H.M. Deller, he let out a whoop. A dignified whoop, but a whoop nonetheless. That’s because the school his parents attended was a “little one-room schoolhouse” called the Deller School. We’re still looking for a photo of it.

Gary remembers his dad telling the story of walking to school that first day. Andrew was just six, and his father walked him halfway. Over the crest of a hill, he pointed the way and Andrew finished the walk alone.

By 1896, Great-Grandpa Henry Schum had increased his land holdings to 240 acres.

The only other page we could find was for 1926, after the land had been passed down to one of Henry’s 19 children (yes, I know), Rose.

Mike and Rose had eight children.

Here’s the land they lived and farmed on:

You might wonder why the total land for M. Mehling is 219 acres and not an even 220. That’s because the aforementioned Deller schoolhouse is taking up an acre in that corner of the property where there’s a large 9. As was standard at the time, the landowner donated the acre for the school and whenever the school closed, the land reverted back to the original owner.

Gary talked about the land and I talked about the murder.

That’s right, Great Grandpa Henry Schum was murdered.

Since everyone already knew the basic story (although a show of hands among the inlaws indicated we weren’t informed of the crime until after wedding vows had been taken), I took a different path.

Together we dug into the stories of the two men – both Henry’s employees and both named Frank – who murdered him that day. They were arrested, charged with murder, and eventually “took a plea” for manslaughter the morning the trial was scheduled to begin in Boonville (change of venue).

But before we get ahead of ourselves, here’s a question: What’s the meaning of the word “lousy”? Because when Henry heard a fight out back of what is now the Ferdinand American Legion – and realized they both worked for him – he muttered, “those lousy boys” and they attacked their 65-year-old boss.

Now, when Gary told me that story, he said lousy (meaning crummy or rotten). But that’s not as tantalizing as what the Evansville Courier newspaper came up with:

Maybe the Franks did have lice, but somehow I don’t think that was Henry’s concern.

The Franks were sentenced to two-to-21 years in prison in Jeffersonville. Given that one of the Franks got married in 1912, we can safely assume they only served two or three years. Both lived to be 75, an entire decade longer than Henry.

We ended the discussion wondering …

Did either of the Franks ever apologize?

One of Gary’s cousins said her mom had heard the married Frank talked about the murder regretfully on his deathbed. We all took a deep breath at that point.

It was nice spending a few hours with Gary’s Mehling cousins. Sounds like there are already plans to do it all again next year.

Maybe by then we’re know more about that little one-room schoolhouse.

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