Remembering a Gainesville landmark
The house was unpainted when this undated photo was taken. It’s believed the people in the photo are members of the John and Mary Conkin Harlin family, who owned the house “sometime after 1873,” according to Times archives. Perhaps some of the Harlins’ eight sons are some of those pictured.
When Dr. Prentice Bushong and his wife Mary Luna Bushong owned the house later, they added a picket fence, an upstairs porch railing – and a coat of paint. The next photo shows the windmill that stood in the backyard – we assume connected to a water well.
This photo shows the windmill that stood in the backyard – we assume connected to a water well.
Demolition: These photos of the demolition were published in the Feb. 25, 1987, edition of the Times when the old house was torn down to make way for a "giant expansion" of the grocery store.
The four photos accompanying this week's Times Past column show the grand old house that once stood where the Town & Country Supermarket is now. We don't know when the house was built, but a historical piece published in the Feb. 1, 1973, Times, says that "sometime after 1873," John W. and Mary Conkin Harlin moved into the house, after having lived awhile in a log house on what is now Harlin Drive. The Harlins had moved here from Kentucky after the Civil War, and John Harlin had served as sheriff and as county collector.
Shortly after the Harlins' eighth son was born in the house, John W. Harlin died of blood poisoning, which reportedly set in after he cut his leg on a cornstalk while working in the field adjoining the house.
Dr. Prentice Bushong and his wife, the former Mary Luna, were the next owners of the house. We don't know when they moved in, but great-granddaughter Janet Ebrite Taber believes it was probably in the 19-teens. Dr. Bushong died in 1948. Mary still owned the house at the time of her death in 1971.
The original Bushong farm covered nearly 600 acres, according to the Times archives. Janet Taber remembers seeing a photo of the Bushongs' two daughters playing on the farm's windmill tower. Janet said in a Facebook post that the farm included a "huge garden, orchard, henhouse, smokehouse, barn and sheds."
A Dec. 31, 1942, story reported that the Bushongs' barn was struck by lightning and "became a roaring furnace, and none of the contents could be saved." A "fine young bull" died in the fire. The Times reported that the lightning that set the barn on fire "also blew out most of the lights in town. Also many radios were burned out."
The farm extended westward to what is now Elm Street, and perhaps beyond. A historical overview of the Ozark County Volunteer Library, published in the Sept. 9, 2009, edition of the Times, notes that the library is housed in the former First Christian Church building, which was built in 1937 on land "donated by Dr. P. E. and Mary Bushong."
The Oct. 18, 1973, edition of the Times reported that "construction began last week on a new building for Town & Country Supermarket . . . near the former Mary Bushong home." The house continued to stand next door to the grocery store until February 1987, when the Times published the photos shown above in its Feb. 25 edition, reporting: "The landmark was pushed down Monday to make way for a giant expansion of Town & Country Supermarket. . . . After standing for nearly a century, it toppled in a matter of minutes."