The boy in the box. In total darkness, seconds from death inside a makeshift coffin under an Illinois farm, young Ed English gasped for last bits of oxygen and inhaled an accompanying cascade of black dirt into his lungs. Farm accidents haunt agriculture, but the intentional burial of Ed English is a bizarre tale woven into a rich family tapestry.
Gravediggers
“I’m the last in line to know this story,” says Dale English. “My dad, Ed, was buried alive on our farm as a little boy. It was much more traumatic than what is described in the remaining details.”
In 1914, Walter and Fanny English of east-central Illinois’ Edgar County celebrated the birth of a whopping 12 lb. and 2 oz. baby boy — “little” Ed.
Outside the tiny town of Redmon, roughly 7 miles west of Paris, alongside two elder siblings, Kate and Harlan, Ed was raised on a 212-acre livestock and row crop operation centered around a two-story, wood-shingled farmhouse and an adjacent bunkhouse for hired hands.
On a May morning in 1916, a family friend was interred approximately 3 miles from the English operation. Garbed in black, the entire farming community, including the English family, rolled down Edgar County’s dirt roads on horses, buggies, and wagons, bound for Embarrass Cemetery.
Following the service, the attendees remained graveside with the body and coffin. As was custom—no one left until duty was done. “Everyone stayed right there and lowered the coffin, and then people took turns filling in the hole with dirt,” Dale describes. “Harlan, 8; Kate, 6; and even my dad, Ed; 2, were all witnesses.”
Reversing course, Walter and Fanny, along with their brood, returned home at noon. Walter issued instructions to the hired men and began harnessing livestock for planting. (In the age of pre-mechanization, Walter relied on horsepower: The first tractor in the English rows, a Farmall, wouldn’t arrive until the early 1940s.)
As Walter left for the fields, Fanny ascended the front steps of the house, walked across an elevated front porch, and moved through a front room toward an expansive kitchen. Before starting on the day’s dinner, Fanny gave 6-year-old Kate plain babysitting instruction: “Mind your little brother, Ed.”
Primal Scream
“The kids went outside to play,” Dale recounts. “Apparently, Kate had paid close attention to the actions at the cemetery earlier that morning, but she didn’t realize the consequences.”
In the front yard, in freshly tilled, soft soil of the family garden, Kate found a low spot and began digging with a shovel, tossing aside enough dirt to create a sizable hole. Intent on recreating the funeral scenario, she took a cardboard box—essentially a corrugated paper carton—and dropped it in the hole. Next, Kate placed her toddler brother, Ed, inside the box, closed the flaps or lid, and commenced a live burial.
“Dad was a 2-year-old and so the hole didn’t have to be deep or big,” Dale says. “Kate filled in the dirt around the box and then covered him, and he was too little to realize what was going on, but the dirt would have been pouring into the box the whole time she was filling in the hole. Harlan was the eldest child and would have recognized the danger, but he wasn’t in the garden. His location is lost in the story, but I think he was inside the house or around back.”
Upon completion of her brother’s burial, Kate walked into the farmhouse, where Fanny noted the absence of her youngest son.
“Where is Ed?” Fanny asked.
Kate delivered a literal response: “In the garden.”
Alarm growing, Fanny ran outside, saw the patch of fresh dirt, and immediately understood the horror. Her primal scream was heard by two nearby hired men who rushed to the garden and helped save Ed—buried for at least several minutes.
“They dug him out of the ground, but I don’t know if he was still breathing or not,” Dale says. “They hitched a wagon and headed to the Paris hospital, eventually leaving the dirt road for a brick road, Maple Avenue, that ran a mile-and-a-half into the town. The road was made up seven layers of bricks, one on top of the other, and was only for incoming wagons.”
“Dad was at death’s door,” Dale continues. “He had come within a moment of suffocation. They got him to the hospital in time, but his condition was so bad that he stayed three weeks. Maybe just a few more seconds of being below ground and he would have died.”
“My Aunt Kate was always the wild child,” Dale adds. “She got Harlan next.”
Clotheslined
Five years after Ed’s near-death brush, the circus came to town in Newman, Illinois. Thirty miles northwest of Paris, Harlan, 13; Kate, 11; and Ed, 7, watched the wonder of elephants, clowns, acrobats, and trick riders.
Returning home to the farm, the three farm kids saddled their ponies and reenacted the big top procession—circling the yard with Kate as self-proclaimed leader. Kate’s circus parade turned into a game of follow-the-leader: Do as I do.
“Kate got the boys lined up behind her, with Harlan in the middle and my dad in the rear,” Dale describes. “She started them going around the house, including riding the ponies under the clothesline. When they came around the third lap, Kate had it planned. She sped up and then stood in the saddle, knowing her brothers would copycat. Right when Kate reached the clothesline, she intentionally dropped in the saddle, and Harlan got clotheslined and somersaulted backward off his pony. Harlan survived, but he injured his back and head.”
Witness to the Bambino
One farm. One family. So many stories.
In 1930, at 17, Ed entered the University of Illinois, but contracted measles and pneumonia in his first semester and was hospitalized—a six-week stay. While Ed was in the hospital, his father, Walter, suffered a heart attack and died on the farm. Ed, almost two months behind in schoolwork, walked away from college and took the family farm reins.
Conversely, Harlan left the farm for medical school. In 1932, during urology training in Chicago, Harlan bought a golden ticket for Game 3 of the World Series between the Yankees and Cubs at Wrigley Field. In the fifth inning with the score tied 4-4, the farm boy from Edgar County witnessed sports and cultural history when Babe Ruth called his shot and jacked a 2-and-2 curveball for a home run to center.
“Family farm stories are all connected, even the tiniest ones, but time slips by and they get lost so fast and easy,” Dale says. “It’s tough to understand your future if you forget about your past.”
Save the Clock
Dale, 71, spent his childhood in Ed’s shadow at family-owned English Grain, Inc. in Redmon. In August 1962, when Dale was 10, he woke at 1 a.m. to the ringing of the home telephone, and heard Ed answer the call and burst from the house: English Grain’s wooden elevator caught fire after electrical issues triggered a blaze. Over 40,000 bushels of oats were burning and the flames were visible 10 miles away across the farmland flats.
Although 60-plus years in the past, the memory is yesterday to Dale. “The fire truck was parked across the street from our elevator, but the boys couldn’t get it started. The fire chief got in and told the boys to push him down the ramp and he’d get the truck jumped. They pushed him and he cleared the street, rolling to within 20’ of a 150’-tall wall of flames,” Dale says, wearing a wide grin.
“Finally, they got the fire truck started, but they had no water. They drove the truck 1 mile east of town out to a ditch and filled a 300-gallon tank with water. Then they came back and saved the office and some nearby houses. It’d been quicker if everyone in town had gathered and peed on the fire. The oats smoldered for six weeks.”
The catastrophic loss of the elevator and its contents was contrasted by Ed’s devotion to wall décor, Dale recalls with a massive chuckle. “Of all the wild scenes that night while everything was on fire, I’ll never, never forget my dad rushing into the grain office and scrambling out with, of all things, a wall clock. There were files, money, and equipment inside—but he came running out clutching a black-and-white, nondescript wall clock.”
In 1974, Dale joined graduated from the University of Illinois and worked for Farm Credit before returning to the farm in the spring of 1977. Two years later, Ed had a stroke and passed away.
At Ed’s death, Dale, 26, suddenly was at the helm of the elevator business, 1,000 acres of row crops, 100 cattle on feed, and a 50-cow beef herd. “When my dad died, the delayed price grain regulations hadn’t tightened,” Dale says with a heavy dose of relief. “He was sitting on 100,000 bushels of beans and 40,000 bushels of corn—and none of it was hedged. For several years, I couldn’t tell my mother, Mildred, or my brother who was a CPA. I told no one.”
Who We Are
And what of the “wild child,” Kate English?
She remained a woman cut from her own cloth, according to Dale. “Kate married Freeman Overton, a farmer on 160 acres, and became a homemaker,” he explains. “In 1960, when Kate was 50, they built a new house, but Freeman died right after they moved in. The neighbors showed up to try and rent the land, but she bucked all of them. By herself, she farmed that ground for the next 20 years out of spite. No neighbors were getting on that land.”
“That was Kate. When some people hear about how she buried one brother and clotheslined another, they really wonder,” Dale adds. “But she truly loved her brothers and her family, except she was one of those individuals that marched to a different beat.”
“All these histories on our farms, no matter how small they might seem, need to be saved because they are a part of us,” Dale concludes. “They are who we are.”
Postscript: After Ed English died in 1979, he was buried on the family farm for the second occasion, this time in the back yard, roughly 200’ from the garden spot where Kate covered him in 1916. Rest in peace.
For more from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com 662-592-1106) see:
Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man
Young Farmer uses YouTube and Video Games to Buy $1.8M Land
While America Slept, China Stole the Farm
Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years
The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland
Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam
Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History
US Farming Loses the King of Combines
Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy
Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs
Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam
