MORE HOPPES TALES

                                    As collected by Denise Kern and Harry Hoppes

 

 

 

A HOPPES GHOST STORY as told by Marvin Davis to Harry Hoppes

 

During the Civil War, Michael Hoppes and his wife, Catherine Balliet Hoppes, lived at the Hoppes mill in the Mahoning Valley, west of Mantzville.  The mill had a house attached and there was another stone house on the property.  The couple owned the milling business and a dairy farm.  A springhouse stood in the swamp some distance from the mill.

 

One summer evening thirty pounds of butter, some of which belonged to Michael’s mother, disappeared from the springhouse.  There was no clue as to who had taken it.

 

Over the years, lights were seen crossing the swamp to the springhouse and them leaving the swamp.

 

One night in the 1890’s, there was a family gathering on the lawn overlooking the swamp.  The lights again appeared and moved toward the springhouse.  This time they were so bright that it was possible to see blue uniforms with bright, shiny buttons.

 

Catherine, now an old woman, exclaimed, “those are the men who stole my butter.”  When she said this, the lights turned, left the swamp and were never seen again.

 

There is a Pennsylvania German belief that the ghost of anyone who steals must walk the earth until his misdeed is discovered.

 

 

A HOPPES GHOST STORY (Version II) as told by Marvin Davis to Deborah Matthias, Press Writer

 

New Tripoli Man Shares Historic Haunting

 

As a child, Marvin Davis of New Tripoli was told a family story of a mysterious haunting.  He is the sixth generation in his family to be the keeper of the tale.  Michael and Catherine Hoppes who are mentioned in the story are Davis’ great-great-grandparents.  The following is “A Hoppes Ghost Story,” as revealed by Davis.

 

The setting for the haunting takes place during the time of the Civil War when soldiers were becoming disillusioned with the hardships of wartime.  Deserters were known to wander from farm to farm, perhaps looking for shelter in barns or searching for food.

 

Michael Hoppes and his wife Catherine Balliet Hoppes resided in the Mahoning valley, west of Mantzville.  Their homestead was known as Hoppes Mill.  On the property were two dwellings, one attached to the mill and a separate stone house.

 

Hoppes and his wife were owners of the milling establishment and also had a working dairy farm on the premises.  In a murky swamp in an area well removed from the mill stood the springhouse.

 

On a summer evening 30 pounds of butter vanished from the springhouse without a trace.  Some of the missing butter belonged to Michael’s mother.  The family had no hint as to who had taken off with it.

 

Years after the strange disappearance of the butter, from time to time an odd occurrence would take place.  Unexplained lights would be seen cutting across the swamp in the vicinity of the springhouse.  The eerie lights would then leave the swamp as if searching for the butter thieves.

 

One night in the 1890s the Hoppes family gathered on the lawn overlooking the area of the swamp.  Again the unearthly lights advanced toward the springhouse.  On this particular night the lights were unusually bright.  So brilliant were the lights that the onlookers could see the blue uniforms of soldiers with shining buttons.

 

Mrs. Hoppes, now an elderly woman, cried, “Those are the men who stole my butter!”  As she uttered those words of surprise, the lights shifted to the left of the swamp.  They disappeared and were never seen again.

 

According to an old Pennsylvania German belief the Hoppes family’s haunting was resolved.  The belief says, “The ghost of anyone who steals must walk the earth until his misdeed is discovered.”

 

 

A VISIT WITH DOC HOPPAS by Lloyd Bailey, submitter and author, as collected by Denise Kern

 

SPRUCE PINE, June 13. (Special) Log of a recent delightful visit to the home of Doc Hoppas, the ballad singer of Bushy Creek, in Mitchell County:

 

We had just found our way in the darkness up the old mine railroad from Penland in search of Mr. Hoppas' cabin, half hidden from the moonbeams by the whispering pines which sweep their odorous boughs almost to the doorstep.

 

The sprightly notes of a banjo floated over the boxwoods by the house and down the warm dark of the lawn. The porch was already full of people as we climbed the steps. They perched along the railing. They sat in chairs along the railing. They sat in chairs along the house wall and even upon the floor. The house loomed large in the darkness, evidently two wings at right angles to each other with a porch running the length of both buildings.

 

Doc Hoppas, the singer and storyteller whom we had come to see, sat on a straight chair at the head of the porch with his wife and daughter beside him. The moonlight played across his face as he sang, the banjo held easily on his lap, all his thought on the delight of the song. We took the chairs that some of the earlier comers offered us and the song went on without interruption.

 

“That's the 'Rim Rock Ranch' he is signing”, a voice whispered. “He made it himself, all of it, the words and the tune.”

 

The notes died away and for a moment there was no sound but the murmur of the wind in

the woods and then he swung into the rollicking “Cindy,” his own words to an old refrain. Then a man's voice broke into a pause in the music asking: “Doc, could you tell us another time about old Uncle Jim going over the Chalk?”

 

Marvelous Story Teller. Everyone sits up with interest as Doc lets the banjo slide to his knees and leans back to rest a moment. Then he launches into the tale and we are carried away even as is by the adventures of Uncle Jim. This is not amateur story telling but the gifted word painting of an artist. He carries the story along in leisurely manner but without the inclusion of unnecessary detail, approaches the climax with masterful ease, never losing sight of the main point and then stops at exactly the right time. He had a sense of proportion and drama, this maker of songs and stories. We see as clearly as though they passed before us, the convivial Uncle Jim and his crony, Will, waylaying the young man who is on his way down the mountain to take dinner with his girl. They insist that he escort them back up the mountain the way he had come because they are unfit to ride alone on account of having drunk so much corn liquor, and then hinder him the whole day through with their drunken antics.

 

Then he tells his delighted audience about the man who had turned himself hitched into the yoke by the side of a little ox to teach the ox how to work and had many adventures before he got out of the yoke again. Now Doc is ready to sing some more. “Kitty Wells,” this time, his own composition, with different words and music than the Victrola records version. Some one wants to hear “Fifty Years Ago” and Doc obliges with a delightful rollicking song about the coming of the patent stove.

 

Two or three of the audience are calling for the story of the wedding party going over the Burnt Mountain. Doc has talked and sung so long that he is getting hoarse but the “Burnt Mountain” is a favorite and he tells it. The story is the climax of the evening. We go with Doc and some of the young bloods to a wedding over at a cabin on the other side of the Burnt Mountain. They want to prime their spirits to face the long cold walk with corn liquor but cannot find any when they want it. So they start out dry, consoling themselves that undoubtedly there will be plenty at the wedding. But there isn't. There are tables loaded with food but no liquor although they know the host has quantities of it somewhere. They find a barrel at last, tap it uninvited with a straw and then commence to react in unexpected ways. Such a wild funny wedding celebration it is, with the guest stamping about in the snow outside around the house, trying to sober up. And then comes the long walk across the mountain accompanied by the bride and groom. It is a grand tale all the way to its hilarious climax.

 

“The Little Moqui” Now for one last song, Doc sings “The Little Moqui.” He cannot tell you the exact history of the song but it sounds like one of the old ballads. It is the tale of an Englishman who sails away to the West Indies, leaving his haughty English sweetheart to wait for him. In the south he meets a little Moqui maiden who wants him to stay with her always, but he remains true to his first love only to find upon his return to England that she has forgotten him. Then he sails back to the south again to find his little Moqui and all is well.

 

The party is breaking up, straggling away into the glorious scented mountain moonlight. Down the steep and wavering dinky line a couple of miles away lies the Toe River and the little village of Penland. Up the road from the Hoppas' house about a mile away is Estatoe and the state highway to Ashville. Doc Hoppas has always lived in the Brushy Creek country. He was born at Estatoe and from there came to his home farm. Although he has not traveled far to see the world, the world seeks him out.  Most of the guests at Appalachian School find their way down to Penland, across the river by the railway trestle and up the valley where the old dinky line winds under the trees, crossing and re-crossing the branch on its way to the Hoot Owl mines for that is the way to the Doc's house from the Penland side. Many of the cross ties have fallen in at the trestles and the traveler skips with bated breath across yawning rectangles where the water gurgles in the dark below. An abandoned spar car stands on the rails and if the party started for Doc's is energetic they will push it ahead of them to leave at a high point on the track for a thrilling ride back down the valley at the end of the evening. And it is a thrilling ride.

 

A Risky Ride. The bottom of the car has long since gone but lies piled on the frame will work quite well as a piece of fence rail for a brake stick, only, as Doc said to a timid guest debating whether to risk the ride or not. “Somebody's neck will get broke yet. The proper thing seems to be to throw the brakes stick away as soon as you get going good.”

 

And get going the old car does, roaring under the shadowing trees down the dark rails, tearing across the aged trestles where one is almost afraid to walk and then the last spurt under the open sky when it shoots over the long Toe River trestle and comes to rest, unexpectedly on the Penland side.

 

A Perfect Host. There are always people coming down from Estatoe and up from Penland, strangers and home folks, and always they ask for songs and stories. He is the perfect host, never too busy, never too tired. In the winter, the listeners gather in the tidy living room by the big fireplace, the rosy little grandson plays on the hearth and the poet singer tells of the old days, warm summer nights and rattlesnake dens and new slashing in the woods and hard drinking court weeks and the winter and the cold, etc.

 

 

MISSING SECTION

 

 

Began While Young. Doc learned to play the violin and banjo when he was a little boy 10 or 12 years old. His first banjo was his own handiwork. He took an old wooden box, circular like a cheese box that was used for axle grease and used the rim for the foundation. Then he covered the top, made his own stem, stretched waxed shoe threads on it and he had his banjo. That night he learned to play. The next day he was making his own tunes and he has been making them for 30 years.

 

He has a natural talent for creation. The bobbins his wife uses in her weaving are filled on a clever little machine he invented and forged in his steel lathe which clamps to a sewing machine. He is very modest about his mechanical accomplishments. The method of bobbin winding in practice did not seem practical and so he created a way that was, but a great deal of careful thought and work went into the execution, and the results is a useful, practical little machine that fills a household need in homes where weaving is done.

 

The whole Hoppas family is musical. The son and daughter play the violin, the mother the guitar. Doc plays either the violin or banjo, and how he loves them.  He has the face of a poet, long, thin and sensitive with deep-set eyes full of laughter, and the lines about his mouth are the pleasant lines of smiles. He is the true ballad singer and raconteur and his songs and stories are not for money, only for the joy of singing and telling tales.

 

 

BIOGRAPHIES FROM  THE CHOSEN LAND,  Barber County, Kansas, as collected from the Internet by Denise Kern and Harry Hoppes

 

Alfred Hoppes, page 237 submitted by Alfred Hoppes

 

My dad, Lloyd G. Hoppes, was born on August 15, 1886, on a farm near South Haven, Kansas, where he grew to manhood. His parents were Marcus and Isabell Brown Hoppes.  He married my mother, Rethie Yost, who lived in the same community, on November 4, 1906. They established their own home on a farm in that neighborhood.

 

Their first child, my sister Opal (Curtis), born in 1907, now lives in Bluff City. My sister Fern (Crow), born in 1910, now lives in Harper.  I was one of identical twins born in 1912. My twin brother, Alvin, was killed on June 11, 1944, during WWII. In 1920 Dad bought the Bill Maddox farm on Sand Creek near Hazelton in Barber County. We children attended Sand Creek School, where our second teacher was Opal Bloom Parr.

 

In the spring of 1920 Dad bought eight head of milk cows near Kiowa. We all got up early to go to Kiowa in the wagon. One cow was broken to lead and was tied behind the wagon. We kids followed barefoot (carrying our shoes to save them) to keep the cows out of the cornfields. We were all very happy to get home, completely played out. Dad was quite prosperous, also knew how to keep kids at work so they would be tired at night.

 

Dad was a stockman, raising hogs, horses, and mules. Our barn would hold 24 head of horses. We raised over 200 acres of corn a year. The land was so fertile that we raised 12 years of crops in a row. The drought of the 1930's caused us to change our crop to wheat.

 

Mother raised chickens and turkeys, with sometimes as many as 500 turkeys to sell in the fall. We raised alfalfa and let the turkeys eat the grasshoppers. Dad and Mother took turns checking the incubators throughout the wee hours.

 

Dad was a genius, always trying to figure out new ways to save time and steps. He found fault with incubators, thinking that a larger percentage of eggs should hatch. He went to town one day and came home with copper, tin, and tin snips, and built an incubator that would mechanically turn the eggs over. We used the incubator for a number of years. It always outhatched all others.

 

Dad invented an accurate fertilizer attachment, made to fit any grain drill and planter. Insul-Wool Manufacturing Co. built it, and it bore the name "Hoppes." It could be set from 0 to 500 pounds per acre. The "Hoppes" attachment was sold in every state in the Union.

 

Our land is sub-irrigated and produces extra well. The Hoppes kids really knew how to swing a hoe, since there were six acres or more of watermelons and cantaloupes. With one trip a day through the season, two-thirds of the melons were sold in Medicine Lodge. People came to the house, too, to buy melons and sweet potatoes.

 

I married Doris White in 1932. Our daughter, Darlene (Ross) born in 1933, lives in Idaho, and our daughter, Jeanni (Brown), born in 1943, lives in Wichita. My twin brother, Alvin, married Crum, and their son, Dwight, was born in 1934.

               

    

Lloyd G. Hoppes, page 237, submitted by Opal Hoppes Curtis

 

 

I am the daughter of Lloyd G. Hoppes and came with the family to Barber County in 1920. We sold our farm in Sumner County and bought the half section from the heirs of William Maddox. The farm is located in Cedar Township and about eight miles northeast of Hazelton, Kansas.  Sand Creek crosses the eastern part of the farm.  I was twelve years old then and lived there until my marriage in 1927. I married Carl W. Curtis of Attica, Kansas. We now live in Bluff City, Kansas. We have four children, eleven grandchildren, and five great-grandsons.

 

On the farm we raised corn, using horse drawn cultivators. My mother, father, and sister each rode a cultivator, and my twin brothers, which were only seven, pulled weeds in the rows. I did the housework and cooking while the rest of the family was in the field. It took a lot of food to feed our hard working family. Some weeks I baked twenty loaves of bread and churned the butter to go with it. We had a garden and plenty of fresh vegetables. As I recall, salt pork and eggs were our only source of protein, except for fish we caught when we had the time. We had peach, cherry, pear, and apple trees and an abundance of sand plums in our pasture.

 

We milked seven cows and had a cream separator. The cream was put into cream cans and taken to Crisfield and shipped by Santa Fe Express to Wellington. We also had chickens and shipped eggs to Kansas City.  I attended Sand Creek rural school. To attend high school in 1923, I had to ride horseback eight miles to Sharon. I didn't finish the term on account of illness. In 1924 I stayed in Attica and finished my freshman year. In the fall of 1925, my sister and I enrolled at Hazelton High School where I attended until my marriage in 1927.

 

Our recreation was parties, square dancing, fishing, and horseback riding with our friends. We had no radio or television. Nearly every family had a car in the early 1920's, but it was rare for a teenager to own a car in those days.

 

 

 

DUSTY STREETS AND AN ABUNDANCE OF SNAKES - Times News, August 14, 1999

 

The summer of 1886 may not have been as prolonged as the drought now being experienced, but some events made it a memorable time.  The Mauch Chunk Daily Times reported in early August that A. J. DeVoe, known as the "weather prophet," predicted that for a week, the mercury "will run near 100 in the shade."  He also forecast heavy showers by the middle of the month and tornado for the Rhode Island area.

 

One just had to look as far as the streets to find evidence of hot weather.  They were covered with several inches of dust.  It was always a relief when the borough sprinkler made its appearance on the streets.

 

"Now we can polish our shoes and brush our clothes, feeling sure that the dust will not bother us," said one reporter.

 

The hot summer also brought out a number of snake stories.  One lady was startled to find a six-foot black snake coiled in her chicken coop when she went for eggs.  Her husband shot the reptile with his revolver.  When the snake's stomach was cut open, it was filled with egg shells.

 

In an earlier edition of the Daily Times, a reporter proclaimed Washington Hoppes of Mahoning Township the "champion snake killer in Carbon County."

 

The Tamaqua Courier took some exception to the boast, noting that their town had two snake hunters who could do better.  An article in the Tamaqua paper stated that Charles Evans and Moses Welsh killed 48 rattlesnakes while walking along Pitch Mountain.

 

The two men said there were seven older snakes and the rest were young "rattlers."  The men said that when the young snakes saw them, they "crept into the mouths of the older ones, and these more mature snakes then became very defensive.  After cutting one of the larger snakes, it found to contain eight young snakes!

 

One of the great discomforts brought on by the hot weather was insects.  Since there was no insect repellent, the only way to combat the summer invasion of mosquitoes and flies was to try swatting them away.  Opened windows were an invitation to the swarming insects.  Once inside the home, they could be found around the stove or milk crocks, and on exposed food and fruit.

 

When the insect invasion was especially bad, boys in the household were sometimes given leafy branches - an early fly swatter - to reduce the suffering of others trying to dine.

 

Defenseless sleepers had no relief at night as it seemed the insects enjoyed assembling in the dark bedroom.  One of the most-welcomed inventions of the 1880s was the window screen, which allowed fresh air to circulate, but did not help against the annoying bugs.

 

However, the circulation of air was reason enough for Russel Lynes, author and editor of Harper's Magazine, to call the invention of the screen "the most humane contribution the nineteenth century made to the preservation of sanity and good temper."

 

 

 

Denise Kern and Harry Hoppes                                                April 29, 2002