John Franklin Dodds

TADE, DODDS

Posted By: Gloria Dodds (email)
Date: 11/4/2001 at 08:13:37

PIONEER HAS LIVED HERE EIGHTY YEARS

Mr. J. F. Dodds, of Harrisburg township observed his eightieth birthday anniversary, Monday Jan, 21 at his home. His family spent the day with he and his wife at their home where he has lived for fifty years. It was in this home that he and Mrs. Dodds celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, Dec. 21, 1931. He is the only living member of a family of ten children, the oldest sister lived to be ninety nine. And "Uncle John" as he is familiarly known, looks like he might be headed for the century mark.

Mr. Dodds enjoys very good health; his hair is not grey for one of his years, and he can out-walk many younger men. He was born in east Harrisburg township and that community has been his residence all his life except two and one-half years.

Eighty years is a long time to live to see a country develope. Many are the interesting stories he has to relate.

He spent six months in Page couty in 1876; while there he contracted typhoid fever. He says, "I have never been sick since." Later the same year he went to California to visit the Frank Tade family. While in the west he drove a freight train from Carson City, Nev. to Bishop Creek, Calif. The train was composed of thirteen or fourteen horses and two or three wagons coupled togeather. Between two and three weeks were spent on this trip. Incidents of the trip such as lack of water for both man and beast, water too hot to drink; some places where there were pleasant resting places with plenty of water make interesting stories of pioneer life.

While a young man he drove five yoke of oxen and plowed brush and prairie on the farms now owned by J. A. Campbell and Philip Dingley.

He remembers very well, when he was a small boy of going some little distance west of Utica to get the mail from the post office at the home of the father of the late J. W. Rowley. He also remembers very distinclty of seeing the Union soldiers mustering for service on the farm where Nellie Phelps now lives.

He has four children, Harry, Ralph, Donald and Mary. He is a member of the Harrisburg Baptist church; has the esteem of all that know him. He is always willing to do a neighborly act and believes in "living and letting live."