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STIl.L OS THEIR HOSE) MOO\Love Bloomed At Fro PondSchoolBv JIM MfAU.ISTER Independent Staff WriterRomance bloomed at FrogPond school mort than 70 stiffW;ago for one of the happiest couples fn Cabarrus county.Back in the early 1R80 s Hawley MeEtchlt;*rn and \ 1 lie Belle Lefler had to walk more than a mile to the old log school in the Cold Springs sectionOne day at the school, vouniiHawley, 1 then 17. invited Atlie Belle to go with him to the exhibition lt;graduation exercises1 at nearby Fink school|f She accepted the date and on the big day the young blade dressed in his Sunday best and drove his grandfather s buggy over to pick up his pretty sweetheart jThey courted for the next five years and rn January 26. 1899 they were married jToday, almost 5? years later, the McEacherns still act like newlyweds. ItFamiliar FigureMr McEachern has been a famliar figure aroupd the Cabarrus courthouse for 21 years as the officer in charge of the Grand .Jury. “I told them there's no officer to it.” he laughed. I'm just .i waiting boy.”When Hawley McEachern was 19 years old his father left the farm and moved to Mt. Pleasant where he went into the transporting business—with horsesearlv70 Ycai• iT'*4lt;*oand wagons, of courseThe McEacherns hauled in goods from Concord for the local businesses and hauled most of the bricks and machinery forthe Kindley Cotton Mill then under constructionYoung Hawley attended North Carolina College at Mt Pleasant for two years and at the age of 20 he was named schoolmaster at his old alma mater— Prog Pond school.School lasted only four months in those days and when McEachern married his schoolgirl sweetheart he discovered that the only way to support a family wasfarming Ojygyl^f^lAfterMc-withtheir marriage »he Eat herns went back to li\e his grandfather and he helped farm the placeFor the next*30 years they Hv ed on various farms in the community and raised their family which consisted of three childrenJoe, now assis-at Concord; Rut-of Bethel school; Frances Swarin-— and two boys — Fred Lefler and *ob Dove — who are almost like heir own children.of their own I ant postmasterledge, principaland Mrs Mary gen of Concord thev raised —! fishermen. Seldom do they g* out with their cane poles and worms that th*\v don't catch a big mess for the dinner tableFor years and years the Me* Kacherns spent most of their nights working jigsaw' puzzles “People nowadays are so wrapped up in television they don'tknow how lo appreciate jigsawpu//lf*s,” said Mrs. McEachernMr McEachern who farmed all of his life with a horse, is deeply concerned over the modern trends in farming‘ In my day when a man made 200 bushels of grain he was a pretty good farmer Now an average farmer can make thousands of bushels in a year Machines are driving people off the farms just like they're driving them out of the factories Where will they go'1” he asked IFor the past 28 years the McEacherns have lived in the old house built by Horace Blaekwel-der's Father more than 75 years ago on North Main street i n Mt. Pleasant‘ I didn I want to move to townat first, said Mrs McEachern.But you know 1 ve learned to * like it and there are an awful lot of nice people in Mt Pleasant ” • iWas Active FarmerUntil a year or so ago Mr McEachern was still an active farmer. But now he spends most of his time fishing and loafing around the houseThe McEacherns have quite a reputation around Mt Pleasant as
Newspaper Details
Kannapolis Daily Independent
Kannapolis, North Carolina, US
Sun, Oct 20, 1957
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
Virginia T.
VA, USA 27 May 2020
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Kannapolis Daily Independent
