| From: Pat Ramsey daughter of J.P. O'Hanlon (1915 - 2000)
"I thought you might be interested in this thing I wrote down one day as Dad
was talking. He used to drive a team and wagon from Potosi and deliver a load of hay
to Cadet. It took all day and the DeGonia "boys" ,Russell and sometimes
,Howard, helped. Also, they hauled hay and lumber or tiff to Bonne Terre from Cadet
on the old Cadet road with the teams. They all worked the tiff, Dad and Grandpa
mostly stayed there at the Depot in Cadet loading train cars......but they sure knew how
to dig it by hand....He started naming the settlements from Potosi, on 21, and they were.
Potosi, Mud Town, Slab Town, Halfway House(was a restaurant with sleeping rooms,
they ususally stopped there for lunch or a drink). Monkey Mountain, Frogtown Hill.
(Frogtown Hill was really called Fogtown Hill because the road turned right there just
before Monkey Mountain and went thru a low place and it was usually always foggy.
There WERE lots of frogs there. Next came Old Mines, Racola, Poco Town and
Store(that was a French settlement, Browns store is there now) and Cruise. If
you turned on 47 towards Kingston at Mineral Fork River and went to the top of the hill
and turned Left then you went to Recar town. Stay on that ridge and go to Aptus.
Goose Creek was on the other side of Richwoods , the road came on down the hill to
St. Stephens Church and the town, my GrGrGrandpa LaPee had a store there with Daugherty.
If you turn on E. Highway there where the lights are at 21 and E you first go to
Blount town then Trokeyville, Persimmon Orchard, Foxtown, Fountain Farm and Dogpatch. My
Mom taught school at Cruise, Richwoods, and Cyclone(left off 21 south of the new
intersection recently built at 47 and 21) . She and my Aunt Esther DeGonia
taught at Fountain Farm and then she went to Potosi where she continued teaching until she
died in 1953....."
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