DOESN’T LOOK LIKE MUCH, BUT A LOT GOES ON IN PISGAH

It doesn’t look like much from the road, and really it’s not, but still, a lot goes on in Pisgah.

There’s three houses, a grain elevator and a fertilizer plant. There’s no formal township and history is recanted by the “old timers”. It’s a farming community. And if you’re driving down Route 104 out of Jacksonville looking for Pisgah, (the natives call it Pisgee) just remember if you blink, you’ll miss seeing it, and that’s no joke.

“It’s probably one of the most popular villages in Morgan County”, said Virgil Smith, who farmed in Pisgah from 1948 until last year. He now lives in Jacksonville. There used to be more homes on the “downtown plaza” back in the early 1900’s. The whole joke about Pisgah is about how small it is. “But the name has grown, as an outstanding name, for a place that is nowhere”, he said.

Farmers meet every morning at the Pisgah Co-Coperative elevator for coffee, some meet at the Clayton Point Fertilizer plant, in Pisgah, “some have their own key”, said Smith. Anywhere from 20 to 30 farmers may go through the elevator, coming from miles around, to sit and have coffee each day. The elevator has a computer hooked up to satellite and a map of the world on the wall. All the world’s problems are discussed there, “and solved”, said Smith. And sometimes “kangaroo court” is held at the elevator. “When one of the farmers is caught doing an unjust thing in the community, the farmers get together and say, ‘We’re holding court’. And we’ll try them. We’ll have a judge, ask them if they want to be represented by council, things like that.” Then they are either found guilty or innocent and they are punished, “something like, he has to buy donuts for the rest of the week.”

There was a grocery store in Pisgah until the ’50s or ’60s, and then it was turned into a restaurant, he said. “People used to dine out at Pisgah. if you were fortunate, you got a table under the fan. No air conditioning, but if you got a table under the fan, it was the best table in the house. ” The train carried passengers and, “it would stop there every morning and night.”

One thing Pisgah’s known for is its farmers caps. “Everyone wants a Pisgah hat. Why, I have no idea”, said Smith. When farmer caps became so popular, instead of putting a whole advertisement on the hat, “We decided to just put Pisgah, and from day one it’s just been popular, in demand. I’ve donated them to auctions and seen them bring $25 to $30 for a $3 cap.”

Someone decided there should be a Pisgah cap in every state in the U.S., so whenever someone goes on a trip, they leave one behind. There’s also a town called Pisgah in almost every state. Smith left a Pisgah cap in Pisgah, Iowa. And several politicians have taken Pisgah caps with them after passing through.

Pisgah is also known for its annual golf tournament, started by a number of Pisgah farmers in the late 70s. “We started a little get-together tournament. We probably had 20 guys play. We used to call it the Pisgah Open. It grew to the extent that we had to change it to the Pisgah Invitational because we couldn’t allow but 144 players”, no room, “so we had to put a limit on it”, he said. Ever since the beginning of it, “We’ve had to turn people away.”

Pisgah is just a popular name that has grown from nothing, said Smith.

One would think in a place as small as Pisgah everyone would know each other, but Terry and Gary Cully, although they grew up within a mile down the road of each other, actually met on a blind date. They lived in the same farming community, “and our fathers farmed right up next to each other and I had never met him before”, said Terry. “We saw each other maybe half a dozen times in our lives. I went to Jacksonville (high school), she went to Franklin”, said Gary.

Most everyone in Pisgah will tell you that the name Pisgah comes from Mount Pisgah in the Bible and that the town was so called because it’s one of the highest points in the area. Pisgah natives often refer to “downtown Pisgah”, or the “Pisgah Square”, and they’ll laugh and say there’s not much to tell about Pisgah.

A big event for the town women, for the last 70 years, has been the Pisgah Potluck, held every second Wednesday of every month. Dorothy Birdsell, now of Jacksonville, remembers going to the potlucks with her mother when she was just 14. She’s now 80. Terry’s grandmother rode to the first Pisgah Potluck with a horse and surrey. It didn’t cost anything to join and once invited, members are asked to host one potluck a year. Before each meal a member will give Grace. The woman who held the first Pisgah Potluck, Minnie Harcourt, even wrote a song about all the women of Pisgah, just a social group, going to the Pisgah Potluck. At one point, “It got so big that they had to limit it to a five-mile radius. They even had a waiting list to get into the Pisgah Potluck. It got so big, nobody could accommodate everyone in their home”, said Terry.

Pisgah, in the 1930s, had a population of 58 to 60 people and as many as 12 to 14 houses, said Jack Kilver, who was born and raised in Pisgah. There was a railroad that carried livestock, supplies and the mail and a passenger train that came in at 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. “I took the train to high school each morning (in Franklin) and it cost a dime. That was during WW II”, said Kilver. There once was a postoffice and a Union Baptist Church. The large landowners around Pisgah were strong Baptists, said Kilver, and the rumor was that “You had to go to church to work for those people.”

There was also a country school that was started in the late 1800s, the Science Hill School. It was a half mile out of town on one of four roads that met at a bridge, the only such intersection in the U.S., said Kilver. The school had 54 students at one time, grades one through eight, and lasted until school consolidated in the late 40s, he said.

The start of Pisgah may have been around 1860 to 1870 when the railroad first came through, said Kilver. And prior to 1934 there were no hard roads out of the area. The grocery store in Pisgah was the only one for miles around, big enough to purchase half a car load of flour when the train came through, he said. Pisgah had a baseball team for a number of years, managed by Kilver’s father, and “There’d be two to three hundred spectators on a Sunday afternoon.” Much further back there was a blacksmith and a town missionary society founded by Minnie Harcourt, the same woman who began the Pisgah Potluck.

Ernie’s Restaurant, mentioned earlier, was a hangout for the teenagers. Ernie often had a cat on his shoulder or a dog running around somewhere, said Kilver. “He was quite a character.” The state inspectors would come and ask about restrooms and Ernie would point to the outhouse, said Kilver. He also had no running water but every time the state would tell him he’d have to close down, he’d say okay, then he’d be open for business the next day. “Finally the state gave up and decided he could run it for all the farmers around there.”

There is a speed limit through Pisgah, 45 mph, that stretches a couple hundred feet through town. At harvest time, Pisgah is a busy place. The grain elevator holds a million bushels of grain. “Trucks were in and out so they had to slow things down”, said Kilver.

“Over the years, the houses, the depot, the school, just fell into disrepair and were never really fixed up and just disappeared”, he said.

But Pisgah holds it own. And Pisgah caps are still in demand. When Kilver put them out for the elevator in the 70s, “They were so popular I couldn’t keep them. One time I had a general from the Pentagon in Washington call and wanted five hats. In ’78-’79 so many people wanted them. Everybody in the country wanted a Pisgah hat.”

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If you have any information to add to this page, please don’t hesitate to contact me: Mike@PisgahILHistory.com