PhotoMonthMay2004

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This photograph symbolizes our nation's extraordinary growth during the lifetime of Ohio-Indiana pioneer James Minerd (1835-1929), who lived to the age of 94. As a boy in 1844, he migrated with his parents from Van Wert County, Ohio to a farm in Allen County, IN along the Ohio-Indiana border. In boyhood, James found a young cottonwood sapling that he could twist into a knot, and it became his favorite. Many decades later, having inherited the family farm from his father, and grown to an old man himself, James had his photograph taken with this same tree. By that time, he had been vastly outgrown by the cottonwood, which now dwarfed him.