This land was homesteaded from the U.S. by William Sinclair and his wife Nancy ( Carroll). ( see in names of people buried in Sinclair cemetery). They and their sons Matthew, Pleasant and Seldom, also John Wesley, built the cemetery log dwelling and barn that I can remember. They cleared the land on the broad fertile fields and prospered. ( see Nancy’s advice on her memorial to her children in Sinclair cemetery list).
When they passed away the farm went to John Wesley and his wife Sarah ( she died when she was 35 years of age. Later John Wesley married Boone ( Thompson - Gass). His children were Claude, Jennie and Desco and hers was Amos Gass by a former marriage. John Wesley sold Jacob Painter 80 acres of the Sinclair farm to Jacob and Sarah Jane Painter. John Wesley died first and Seldom, Boone and Desco operated the farm until the deaths of Seldom and Boone. Then Desco and his wife, Nannie (Parks) farmed it until 1918 when they sold it to Hiram Gottfried and wife Anna (Limp) before moving to the Axley Dewitt farm near Paoli. Desco’s children born on this farm were Virginia, Ruth, Hoyt and Norman.
I’m afraid that in this day of large scale farming with all kinds of modern machinery and power driven machines and pesticides and herbicides and many other improvements and electricity that we may look upon the early one family farm as being one of small production and as being insignificant in the horse and buggy days. As I write of this farm and others I wish to point out that this was not the case. From 1906 until 1918 the Sinclair farm under the management of Seldom and Desco Sinclair this farm was very productive and prosperous. This was true when Hiram Gottfried owned it from 1918 until George Stevens bought it. Other self-sufficient farms near Wickliffe were those of the Limps, Deichs, Moerys, Eckertys, Gottfrieds, Zimmerman, Leasors, Rolands, Lanes, Cannavan, Sturm, Haiser, Stemply, McFarlands, Ritter, Deel, Veatch and others.
Seldom Sinclair was never married. Besides farming he was a franchised (by his company) fertilizer agent. This was a much sought after dealership in those days. Really he got a percent of all the sales in his district. He kept a small yellow brown speckled pony for a riding horse to contact the farmers in his district. He had a black box of samples. The different grades and analysis were in small glass bottles. Most farmers