Dan’s Great-great Grandma Margret Ann Hickle first came to the Clarksville, Iowa area by covered wagon with her family at the age of eleven.  They had to ford the mighty Mississippi River, by attaching logs to the wagon wheels & floating their covered wagon across, because there weren’t any bridges.  Other Hickle’s had already made the journey to Clarksville (the first is 1855), so they had family to join when they arrived (the original Hickle farm is SE of Clarksville).

Margret spent a few years in Iowa before, as a young woman, heading back to Illinois to work as a hired girl, back then a common practice by young woman before getting married.   During her time back in Illinois she met George Washington Bolin; they fell in love and were married December 29, 1881.  The first four of their children were born in Illinois before they decided to move back to Iowa in 1890, where they had 5 more children (4 of whom survived).  Dan’s great-grandpa Adlai was the first to be born on the current farm.

That fall George & Margret bought their first 80 acres of land, which is where the current farm now sits.   At the time it didn’t include much crop land, but mostly timber, where we now have pasture.  They wanted the timber as it was valuable for both fuel and building.  The east end of the what we now call the “old barn” was already there but George used timber from the land to add on the west end of the barn.  If you visit you can see the big log beams that are still in use today holding up our haymow!