08/28/2026
The family of Mary Culbertson recently made a donation to our collection at the Museum of Fulton County. Mary was born in Dover Township in 1848 and her family is buried in the Pettisville Cemetery. According to Ancestry.com, Mary Culbertson recited the following poem at the Pomona Grange meeting in February of 1886.
"The Rented Farm"
I passed by the farm that they rented this year,
Where they worked in the dust and the grime.
And I thought of the hopes that they buried back there,
In the soil they had tilled for a time.
For the fence was broken, the gate was unhung,
And the weeds grew right up to the door;
The song of the reaper no longer was sung,
And the children played there no more.
They had plowed up the fields, they had sown them with care,
And they looked for a harvest of grain;
But the drought and the winds left the fields stripped and bare,
And their labor was all spent in vain.
Now they’ve packed up their goods in an old creaking van,
And they’re moving along down the road,
To look for a place where a hardworking man
Can lay down a less heavy load.
For it’s hard to be moving from pillar to post,
With no place you can truly call home,
And to look at the land where you’ve labored the most,
And know it’s no longer your own.
