Historical Background on Lone Elk Park Location

As a will be built to get to , perhaps you should know of some of the background of individuals who have been a product of the remarkable tract of land.

Much of it is traced in my book, Four Generations of Service which is linked to my website, making it available free to you 24/7.

The original Rankin Estate was put together by an investor by the name of Rankin. I have been told it came about after being made available because of an epidemic wiped out most of the population way back when. It was attractive due to the river bottoms and hills with gushing springs that suppled water on most of the farms. 

But it needed people to manage the land and do the toilsome work of old time farming. In my book, I showed the house on top of what we now call Antire Hill where my father lived as a youth. It made him a logical candidate to be selected as manager of whatever he was called at the time, and through him was selected the individual farm managers, most of whom were relatives of William C. Weber, my father.

At one time, he directed the digging down of the hill, now known as Antire Hill, in order to get passage from the Rankin Farm to the Antire Farm and all my life was known as Dug Hill, because it was dug down for what is now known as I-44.

So sometime during World War I, or shortly after, the Rankin Estate decided not to manage the farm any more so they leased different farms to different members of the workers at the times.

So this will attempt to record for history some of the children of the originals who grew up on different farms of the complex and the service they did for their community and country. Starting from the West, Arthur Wallach of the Emil Wallach family was lost driving an Amphibius Tractor as US Marine in one of our actions in the Pacific. Joe Wallach, Jr. son of Joseph Wallach Sr. lived on the Rankin Farm gave it all on a Destroyer, when the Callaghan, was sent to the bottom off Okinawa when he went below to attempt to put down a fire that blew up the ship, for which he was awarded a high decoration. Forty five minutes later they were due to come home for repair and was the last ship before the U.S.S. Indianapolis was sunk after delivering the A-Bombs what ended the war.

is located on the old Rankin Farm.

His two brothers, Vernon and Norville Wallach, became high-ranking officers in the Air Force and Army. Norville had a great career in football at MU before World War II and then coached and taught in area schools after. Their sister, Norma Lee, was active in the community of Fenton until her death.

Frank Wallach farmed one of the farms, and went to Texas for warmer weather for his wife and Emil Wallach took over the farm, which was part of the farm we had and raised several productive children there. One of them, Stanley, and I were in the same draft and we entered the U.S. Marines together with his serial number just one higher than mine:  me 981062 and him 981063. His brother, Dan, stayed home and farmed, but all his brothers entered the service and served honorably.

My brother, William F. Weber, had a farm accident at age 18 and served at home during the great war, helping build defense plants in St. Charles County and in Tennessee, but did do great service as mayor of Eureka in its growing stages, being cited a man of the year at a while back.

The Rankins had a famous statement, as David Rankin's theory was:  "Never Sell The Farm."

Perhaps that was the drive that put the Weber-Wallach families in the front of my Four Generation of Service title of my book, I mentioned. This is just a part of our local history that should be noted.

Sorry to any I missed, but my cousin list is growing shorter.