Our History

The Reeves Farm began with George H. Reeves Sr., who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad Company. He found love at a Saturday picnic where he met Birdie Miller who became his wife. This sparked the beginning of the Reeves legacy and to this union were born twelve children. 

In 1941, George purchased the Reeves Farm from his father-in-law, Jim Miller. He migrated his family to the farm immediately raising tobacco and corn as well as buying and selling cattle. 

While George Sr. farmed, Birdie raised their children until they were working age and enjoyed gardening, fishing, and quilting. She was a self-taught seamstress and made draperies and clothes for her daughters to make ends meet. Additionally, she crocheted beautiful afghans and quilts, many of which were featured in local exhibits as well as a nationally published book, “A Communion of the Spirits, African-American Quilters, Preservers, & Their Stories.” 

George Sr. was an industrious man and believed in helping those in need. Sometimes this involved moving a house from another location to his farm so that the workers would have a place to live. These workers, known as sharecroppers, would raise the crops on his farm and live free in the houses. At harvest time, they would pay him a share of their earnings from the crops. George Sr. would have as many as five to ten families on the farm to raise crops. This left him time to buy and sell cattle in the community and surrounding towns, earning him the nickname “Hard Money” because he could wheel and deal. 

The address for everyone who lived at the farm was Route 1, Box 217, and this served as the mailbox for everyone to receive their mail as well as the bus stop after all of the children stopped walking to school down the railroad tracks.

George and Birdie had 33 grandchildren and 49 great-grandchildren earning them the monikers, “Daddy George” and “Mama Birdie.” In the winter of 1979, while helping a neighbor herd cattle, he became ill with pneumonia and never recovered. Daddy George died at the age of 67. In the years that followed, Mama Birdie sold portions of the farm to her eldest son George H. Reeves Jr. and her daughter Frances.