William (Bill) Jasper Hildebrand

Life Story of William (Bill) Jasper Hildebrand

William was the oldest son of eleven children and was born on September 26, 1893 in Tuscumbia, Miller County, Missouri to Joseph Henry Hildebrand and Ida Bell Witt.

Bill’s father, Joseph Henry, was a lumber worker and carpenter and taught Bill from the time he could hold an axe in his hands how to use it.  Bill’s parents, Joseph Henry and Ida Bell, moved to a place they homesteaded in Texas County, Missouri.  Bill had to walk several miles to school.  When the weather was nice, he worked with his father, but when it was too cold to work the timber, he went to school.  Under these conditions, he was only able to finish the third grade.  Even so, Bill became very adept at arithmetic.  He understood square feet, cubic feet, rods, miles, quarters, and what a section of land was.  He could calculate equations, find area measurements, and evaluate mathematical terms better than most young people his age, even though they had more formal education.  He could look at a section of land with timber and was able to estimate quite accurately how many square feet of timber could be harvested.  He could work a hand grain sickle, and was a master at farming using a horse and handmade tools.  While his practical skills and his accomplishments in math soared, his reading skills were not very good.  He did, however, learn to read the Bible and understood it.  Bill grew in stature and even though he wasn’t a huge man, standing a little less than six feet, he became very strong and could man handle most others in a good arm wrestling competition.

He met and married Sadie Alice Barnhart when he was twenty-four years old on July 15, 1917.  She was a beautiful young girl of the ripe old age of fifteen. To show how thoughtful and practical Bill was their first Christmas, he bought his bride a set of long underwear to keep her warm.  Sadie cried because she was really hoping for something more feminine, such as jewelry or silk stockings.  His thinking was: You buy what is needed.  Over the years the Christmases were very enjoyable and they had to be practical as everyone in that era of time was.  They always had a tree and lots of love, good will, and homemade decorations.

Their first child, Lenora Pearl, was born the next June.  When Pearl was born they lived in a log home.  Bill worked at all sorts of jobs to make a living.  In the winter he caught furbearing animals and sold their pelts to supplement their income.  When World War I broke out, he went into the army, leaving his young wife and their baby behind.  He only served three months because the war ended.  Bill said that they ended the war when they heard that he was in the army.  When he returned home, he went about his usual chores.  Not long after Bill returned from the war, little Pearl came down with scarlet fever.  They almost lost her.  It was a trying time for Bill and Sadie.

Three years after Pearl’s birth, a son, Lindsey Arthur was born.  Now Bill had a son who would grow up to help him clear the land.  Bill bought 120 acres of timber land with no buildings on it.  He built a three room house out of rough lumber that he sawed off his own land.  For a living, he made railroad ties with a broad axe or a buck saw, and carried the ties on his shoulders out of a rough ravine and loaded them on to a wagon.  Back breaking work.  When he was having back problems in his later years, a doctor said, “When you were young, or sometime during your life did you have to lift some heavy objects?”  Bill just looked at him and said, “I don’t think so.”

Bill eventually cleared the 120 acres and made a good producing farm out of it.  All the buildings on the place were built by him.  The barn was built from his own logs.  He made the fanciest gate latches anyone could have ever of hoped to see.  He dug ponds with a horse drawn scoop so there would be water for the live stock.  There were a total of four ponds on the 120 acres.  He hand dug a cistern for the family’s water supply.  It was about twenty or thirty feet deep and he cemented the sides and bottom.  A drop bucket, tied to a rope, drew the water up from the cistern.  To keep the water pure, he built a filter system of charcoal, sand and gravel that the water filtered through as it went into the cistern when it drained the rain fall from the gutters around the roof of the house.  He built a storm cellar with a smokehouse on top, so the family would find shelter from the tornadoes.  Food was also stored in the cellar.

Bill butchered his own hogs and wild animals that the family ate, curing his hams and bacon in the smokehouse.  He stretched and tanned the hides of all wild animals and then sold them making extra cash.

Four years after Lindsey was born, Bill and Sadie’s third child, Thelma Marie, came along.  They all felt the crunch of the small house, so Bill closed in the back porch and made another room.  Three years later, on Bill’s birthday, their third daughter, Lela Mae was born.  It didn’t take long to realize that Lela Mae should have been a boy.  She was the busiest little girl imaginable and was always going here and there and could not sit still.

Bill and Sadie were devout Christians.  Traveling preachers, ministers, and missionaries who passed through the area were always invited to stay with them.  It was not unusual to have some stay for a month or longer.  Bill and Sadie’s home was the closest to the Long Hollow Church where revivals were held.

Missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) eventually traveled through the area and Bill became quite adept at discussing religious concepts with the Mormon missionaries.  Eventually, in late October, Bill, Sadie, and Pearl were baptized members of the Mormon Church in an icy pond near their home.  Bill and Sadie’s home became the meeting house where worship services were held.  At the time there were four families in the county that were members of the Mormon faith.  The missionaries kept encouraging Bill to move his family to Utah so his kids could meet and marry other church members.  Try as they would, Bill would not be moved from his home state of Missouri.

Bill did teach the adult Sunday school class for many, many years.  Because there was only one organized congregation in the area for miles and miles around, Bill was not made an elder in the church for several years.  Thus he was not able to baptize his own children.  He did, however, baptize his grandson, David Smith, the youngest son of Lela Mae.

Bill never worked on Sundays, except chores that had to be done.  Sunday was a day of serious scripture reading and being with family and visiting the sick.  If anyone ever came to see Bill on any other day of the week, they would find him busy and would have to follow him around while he plowed, picked up rocks, cut timber, or whatever else he was tending to.

In the summer the family would sit out in the yard until the house cooled off.  They would watch the falling stars and the lightning bugs, talk about the heavens, the planets, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and find the North Star, the Seven Little Sisters and the Milky Way.  In the winter, Bill gathered his family around the dining room table and read and discussed various pieces of literature including, but not limited to, the Holy Scriptures.

Bill was also a grave digger, and as such, was quite proficient with dynamite.  Many areas in the Ozarks are comprised of large, solid pieces of rock, sometimes as large as a big room.  Without the knowledge and expertise of explosives, digging graves can be a very difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. (No pun intended.)

Bill also drove a school bus for several years and he also graded roads in that township with a horse-drawn grader.  In 1949, he purchased the first tractor in the county.  It was very intense and at times a little frightening to learn how to drive the tractor and actually farm with it.  He also bought a milking machine, which sped up the milking process exponentially.  Until then, the cows were all milked by hand, which was a long, difficult, tedious job.   

In 1930 the depression had the country on its knees.  Bill bid on a mail route for the US Postal Service and after receiving word that his bid was accepted, he came to the realization that he was going to have to get a more reliable form of transportation.  He purchased a Model-A Ford pickup and moved his family to Plato, Missouri.  The postal job was a four year contract and Bill never missed a day of delivering the mail during that four year commitment.

In 1931 his youngest son, Loran Jasper, was born.  Loran was not an easy delivery for Sadie, as he weighed in at fourteen plus pounds.

When his four year contract with the Postal Service expired, he bought a general merchandise store in Upton, Missouri for $300.  He sold everything a household needed from candy to chicken feed, gasoline for cars and kerosene for lamps.  There was a cream room in the store where locals brought their cream to sell.  Bill hired a man take care of that part of the operation.  The store managing only lasted for one year.  He missed the farm.  He came to the realization that a farmer was what he was and he didn’t really want to do anything else but work and till the ground.  He sold the store for $300 and a team of horses and a small herd of cows and went back to the farm, which he still owned.

He busied himself building a mill to grind grains of all kinds.  He could now make his own cornmeal, and his own animal feed.  There were a couple of hundred chickens to feed, several hogs, sheep, cows and horses.  He also had a blacksmith shop, and was his own smithy.  He was ingenious enough to build his own bellows to fan the smithy’s flame.  He also designed and built a contraption called a shaving horse.  This machine made shingles in which he used to shingle the buildings he built.  They were smooth and reliable and as professional looking as the ones purchased at the store.

At his blacksmith shop he shod horses for everyone for miles around, ground the grain for neighbors to feed their animals, and did his own sheep shearing.  He built his own beehives and would watch for swarms of bees in the spring and early summer.  He would put them into his hives and set them on his farm to make honey for his family.  Bill enjoyed his bees throughout his life.  Bill could be seen tending his bees when he was in his 90’s.  He designed and built his own honey extractor that worked as well, if not better than the store bought brands.  Bill’s extractor would allow the sun to separate the honey from the comb and designed it so the honey would drain down into the jars to be preserved.

Bill suffered from heat stroke on two different occasions while in the field tending to chores on the farm.  They were severe enough that both times he was bed ridden and doctors and family members were afraid they were going to lose him at any time.  Because Bill was as tough as those nails he had his children straighten, and because he was a fighter, he recovered and was back in the fields working his farm.  Bill may not have been the best patient a nurse ever attended to, but that did not deter his commitment to helping others who were sick.  It was nothing for Bill to go miles to fetch a doctor in order to deliver a baby.  He would sit up with children all night long so the rest of the family could rest.  He helped nurse his family though tonsillitis, toothaches, earaches, pneumonia, split heads, bruises and cuts without the aid of a doctor.  His medical prowess did not end with his family.  He even treated his own animals, for the expenses of a veterinarian were considered a luxury.  

Bill considered his animals, especially his horses, as extended members of his family.  He had a beautiful horse named Barney.  Barney was a large hard working draft horse.  He was very intelligent and a friend to all.  At one point in Barney’s life he came down with the horse version of sleeping sickness.  While Bill was a proud, stoic man, he actually broke down and cried when he thought Barney was going to die.  He built a sling out of small trees that he cut and trimmed down to make poles.  He made braces to hold the poles up and used burlap sacks and ropes to make the sling that held the horse up so he wouldn’t lie down and die.  Bill sat up at night with the horse to keep him awake, and the children took turns keeping the horse awake during the day.  A young neighbor boy brought his old guitar and Lindsey, Pearl and Thelma would sing as the neighbor accompanied them.  Barney lived through the whole ordeal even though the Vet told Bill the horse wouldn’t make it through the week.  Many personal and family prayers went up for Barney during that critical week.

As busy as Bill was tending to his farm, he managed to find time to work on behalf of the community as well.  He served on the school board at Long Hollow School for many years and did most of the hiring of the teachers and choosing of the text books the children used for their lessons.

In 1938, Bill bought a big two-story house and promptly tore it down and had his children straighten the nails that came out of the boards so he could re-use them.  A practice which would not even be considered in today’s world.  He hauled the torn down house by wagon to his home, which was about two and a half miles away.  He then built three rooms on to his house.  Now there were four bedrooms, a large upstairs room, a dining room, and a large living room.

A few years after the additions were built World War II broke out and he and Sadie would have several army camp boarders at a time while Fort Leonard Wood was being built.  Bill worked at the Fort and Sadie worked there during the war while her oldest son, Lindsey was fighting in Germany.  The oldest daughter, Pearl, came to stay with them while her husband, Milton, fought in the South Pacific.

During World War II Bill bought his first radio and operated it on a wet cell car battery.  The family was very limited to what they could listen to as he wanted to listen to the war news every night.  He traded a cow for a windmill and used the wind-power to keep the battery charged.  Bill thought if the volume was turned up, it would use more energy, so the family had to sit very close to the radio and remain quiet so they could hear what was being said.

Bill was a typical woodworker and experienced some of the challenges that most woodworkers face during their working years.  While he was able to keep himself safe from serious accidents, he was missing part of one finger.  This happened in 1952.  A windstorm had blown the grain stalks down and he was out in the field trying desperately to save the crop.  Lela Mae was driving the combine.  Weeds were choking up the sickle, so Lela stopped the combine so her father could un-choke the sickle that by this time had frozen up from its heavy load.  When he finally pulled the sickle free, he didn’t get his hand away from the sickle blades in time and soon part of the grain harvest included the upper portion of his right pointer finger.  Bill considered this incident a minor accident, as he still had nine and a half fingers left to do the job.

Bill and Sadie and the children had moved a total of four times, all within Texas County, Missouri, during the years the children were growing up.  Now all the kids were grown and all living in California except Pearl, who lived for a time in Arkansas before finally moving to California, as well.  Eventually Sadie’s health started to fail her and they decided to move to California to be closer to their children.  Bill became close friends with a man from the church who helped Bill get a job as a ranch caretaker and Sadie a ranch hand cook on the Faye Creek Ranch near Weldon, California.  Sadie’s health continued to decline, so they moved from the ranch back into Bakersfield where Bill became the custodian and gardener for the church building and grounds.  Not long afterwards, Sadie’s health was critical enough that Bill had to give up his custodian job so he could spend more time with her.  Bill did manage to buy a burned-damaged house and completely restore it.  He made a rental unit out of it to supplement their income. 

Finally, on March 10, 1971, after more than fifty years together, Bill lost his beloved wife, Sadie.  He said he was relieved, because he knew the diabetes that she had fought for so many years would not hurt her anymore.

With urging from his children, Bill began seeing a widowed lady named Sybil Dunaway.  With Bill almost in his eighties and Sybil nearly the same age, they surprised several friends when they announced their engagement and were soon married in 1972. 

Bill’s favorite sports when growing up were playing baseball, wrestling, gigging for fish, and hunting possums, coons, and deer.  In his later years, he became a master at checkers, dominoes, and rook.  If you ever decided to sit down with Bill and challenge him to a game of rook, you needed to be prepared for a battle.  He was tenacious in his competitions.  While Bill was an avid board game and card game fan, he never gambled.  The story is told of how his youngest son, Lorin and his wife took Bill and Sybil on a trip to Reno.  Loran had given both Bill and Sybil a role of nickels to play the slot machines.  Everyone eventually lost their roll of coins to the one-arm-bandits except Bill.  He came home with his roll of coins intact in his coat pocket.

Bill was also an accomplished harmonica player.  He was often called upon to play at family gatherings and at other social gatherings.  Jig dancing and Square dancing were two things that Bill enjoyed and became very accomplished at.

Bill has seen the coming of cars, the locomotive, airplanes, jets, rockets, and space shuttles.  He was invited to see the first shuttle landing at Edwards Air Force Base and sat up front to see that beautiful bird land so gracefully.  He made two airplane flights and thought riding in a jet was just too fast.  “You can’t see anything.”  He preferred riding the train or going in a car.

Bill was also a man of deep integrity.  During the depression he was never on government aid.  He always owned a car. His family never thought they were poor.  They ate like kings and there was always an abundant amount of love and all the clothes they needed.  He and Sadie were the first people in the area to own a gas-powered washing machine, which their daughter, Pearl, bought for them.  They were also the first family to own a gas iron and a gas lamp.  There was one time in Bill’s life that it became necessary to borrow some money.  He was not asked to sign a note.  In fact when Bill asked the man where he was supposed to sign, the man looked at Bill and chuckled.  “You don’t need to sign anything,” he told him.  “Your word is good enough in these parts.”

Bill kept himself busy as he grew older and older.  Even in his 90’s, Bill could be seen working on one of the lawn mowers he had purchased at a garage sale, getting it tuned up so it could be resold to someone in need of a good running machine.  In between garage sales and rebuilding small engines, he managed to keep a hearty winter and summer garden that was the envy of everyone in the neighborhood. 

Bill and Sadie had five children, twenty-one grandchildren, and many great grandchildren.  Through Sybil, he has seven step children, twenty eight step grand children and many more step great grand children. 

To sum up the life of William Jasper Hildebrand, he was a lumber jack, carpenter, gardener, farmer, miller, inventor, bus driver, mail man, store owner, grave digger, mechanic, electrician, veterinarian, blacksmith, sheep herder and shearer, butcher, ranch caretaker, building custodian, well digger, landscaper, and small engine repairman.  It should be noted that as a blacksmith, Bill also made picks, shovels, hoes, plow points, and repaired iron wagon wheels.  In short, there wasn’t much Bill could not do.

If one could ask Bill today, what his greatest accomplishment was in life, he would say without hesitation…being a father to my children and a husband to my wife.

Bill left this life in March of 1991 at the age of 98.

This overview of the life of William Jasper Hildebrand was compiled by his grandson Charles Hildebrand, oldest son of Lindsey Arthur Hildebrand, who was Bill and Sadie’s oldest son.  The contents of this bio was gathered by reviewing other materials written and published by various family and friends as well as word of mouth stories recalled by the author.