Well, sort of…. Scott Lawless, once upon a time a member of the Garfield class of ’79, later a graduate of Chippewa High School in Doylestown, OH, and a member of the far-flung Lawless clan hereabouts is on a mission to uncover more information about the origin of an artifact that he found under the floorboards of his grandfather’s old barn while miraculously recovering from whatever it was that kept him out sick from school one day in the fifth grade. The barn was located in the space behind the house–which still stands at the corner of Maple and North streets–about where Mark’s Automotive and the Rite-Aid drive are today…in the area, anyway.
The artifact in question was a milk bottle, a glass milk bottle that used to be pretty common in grocery coolers and on household steps where they were deposited by that long-departed figure, the milkman. This particular bottle had raised letters identifying it as having been produced by Beardsley Farms, Garrettsville, Ohio, and the milk as coming from the Barkrest Herds.
Now even by the time this bottle and its accompanying oddments came out from under the barn floor (‘70? ’71?), the dairy was long gone, the Barkrest herd was no more and the cows had gone home. But where was the dairy? And what happened to the Beardsleys?
Scott has been on the trail. He’s visited the Garrettsville Park Cemetery and Freedom West Cemetery, consulted with Kit Semplak of the James A. Garfield Historical Society and the records available in the society’s archives. He’s talked to the current owner of the property, out in Freedom Township, who has documents of interest. He’s looked over plat maps of the township, found names and listened to stories. There seems to be a connection to the surname, Barker…headstones, marriages, that sort of thing. One circumspect obituary in the Garrettsville Journal remarked of the late owner of the property that, “She lost her financial standing in the community.” Bankruptcy?
So…have you any clues out there? Any other bottles? Any stories of the Beardsley family or the Barkrest herd? (Heck, would you like to tell stories about Grandpa Lawless? He was apparently a character, at least according to Loretta Stevens, his granddaughter and Scott’s cousin)
Let’s hear it from gumshoes and storytellers and “little pitchers” with big ears who remember hearing about any of this long, long ago. Up ‘n at ‘em, sleuths!
