Richwood, 1889

To the Editors of the Recorder: I spent last week in the Richwood and Beaver Lick neighborhoods. At Richwood I have met H. A. Hicks, the leading horseman of our county. While he would rather talk horse than politics, I found him well posted on county matters. He had a fine farm, stocked with horses of the purest strains, such as the Axtels and Sunols spring from. He showed me a yearling colt which had I seen at any other place than on his farm, I should have valued at $50. He remarked that it “looks like a sheep that if he could send it to a plaining mill and have it shaped up it would pass.” I ask him what it was worth. He said “$2,000 will not buy it.” Negotiations ceased there. Mr. Hicks is the chief motor in the effort to build a fairground between Richwood and Walton and he thinks it will be a success if organized upon a liberal basis. In this neighborhood I also met a very loquacious blacksmith who posted me upon the faults, foibles, weaknesses and peculiarities of the entire neighborhood, while putting a shoe on my horse, which by the way, was a great assistance to me in the remainder of my canvass in the neighborhood. Richwood, a tract of land of about 3,000 acres, is the cream of Boone Co. It is divided into some 8 or 10 farms owned by well-to-do families. 

from the Boone County Recorder, December 4, 1889