In my internet searches for Knox County-related images, I sometimes find ones that provide little information.
The main image in this article shows wheat threshing on the Eddie Inks farm near Fredericktown. However, the person selling the image on a popular auction site knew nothing more about it. If any readers can pitch in more information, by all means do.
Fortunately, the farmer’s surname is a rare one, making a search fairly easy.
The Inks family lived in Wayne Township, west of Fredericktown. I first found young Eddie, age 3, in the 1880 Knox County census.
Edward was the son of Thomas and Arminta Inks. Thomas’ father was born in England, while his mother was born in Pennsylvania. Arminta’s parents came from Ohio and Vermont, respectively.
At this time, Eddie also had a baby sister named Hattee. Later genealogical sources show that the family had three more children.
It may be that Eddie took over his father’s farm because, when he first appears on the 1920 census with his wife, Linna Belle (Hines), at least one neighbor is the same as when Eddie was listed as still living on his parents’ farm. His father, Thomas Inks, had passed away in 1912, so it appears that Eddie inherited the farm.
Eddie’s (or, as he spelled it, “Edie”) World War One draft card described his address as Rural Route 2, and it gives us his full name, Edward Newton Inks. The card describes him as tall, slender, with blue eyes and dark gray hair. Whether it was the marriage or the farming that made him start going gray in his thirties, we don’t know!
Eddie lived a long life, so this photo could date anywhere between 1912 and his death in 1966. Eddie and Linna Belle are never recorded as having children. They don’t even show any additional help on the farm until the 1940 census, when Linna’s brother, Elmer, moves in, along with a hired man named Lindby Ewers. Perhaps the three men in this photograph are Eddie, Lindby, and Elmer.
Judging by the Inks farm property as shown in the 1896 Knox County atlas, it lines up with a farm visible on Google Earth today. The farmhouse is very possibly the original structure from the Thomas Inks farm, possibly expanded by his son at some later point. It is good to see the fields on this farm still in agricultural production all these years later.
