|
Black
community of Little Needmore established after Civil War Almost nothing is left of the black community of Needmore (sometimes called "Little" Needmore), in eastern Boyle County. The settlement off Kemper Lane was established after the Civil War by several black families. Some of the names in the settlement, as remembered by Gary Ginter, were Gray, Stallworth, Penman, meaux, Franklin, Mullins, Sears, Berry and Bowman. Ginter also remembers "Jumbo" Gray, "Poodle" Penman, Lena Berry, Stoney Bowman and Johnny Trumbo. There are few reminders of the once thriving community. It had a church, a general store, and, at least until the 1970s, several residences. The only reminders oeft are several dug wells, brick- or fieldstone-lined, several rock fences, and several foundations made of limestone. There is no sign of the large cemetery or the church which once existed. The settlement was located between the Bright and Underwood properties, and encompassed between 20-25 acres. Ginter grew up on the farm his grandfather, Worth Mansfield, owned. he believed the rock foundations came from a rock quarry on a hillside nearby. He remembers a two-story log cabin, with the roof falling down, that was once located in an open field at the top of a hill. Stoney Bowman once lived in that house. When Ginter was 13, he found a hermit who had moved into the Bowman house. "The kids were afraid of him. We thought he was an old man, but the man was about 25." He lived there for about a year, then disappeared. Children once played in the woods running between Clark's Run and Needmore Lane. The creek was once crossed by a swinging bridge. The first television in Needmore belonged to Ginter's grandfather, Worth Mansfield. Everyone came to their house to watch it. Much of the community came to help when his grandfather Mansfield killed chickens and hogs. R. L. Stodemayer, Ginter's stepfather, moved to Needmore in 1955. Stodemayer said that families carried water from a spring house near the house that Gintner built a few years ago. The spring has never run dry, and is covered by a house. The mid-1960s saw most families beginning to move away, and most had moved by 1970. Jumbo Gray and the Franklin family, however, stayed there for the rest of their lives, in the only house currrently (2007) standing in the settlement.
|
