In 1922, when I was about five years old, our family spent our vacation at Aunt Jo's farm in Michigan.  Joanna Adams Morrill was a remarkable woman, far ahead of her time. Before this visit, I had heard a lot about her and what she did.  She and her older sister, my grandma Fisher, were born into a prominent Chicago family, descendants of the Adams family of presidents.  Aunt Jo and her sister Mary Rebecca were eight years apart in age; they grew up in Chicago and attended public schools there.

Aunt Jo went to Wellesley College and following that to business college graduating from Bryan and Stratton Business College in Chicago.  This was before 1900!  At the time women had few choices for a career outside of the home or classroom.  This training would be of great importance in her life.   She loved business affairs.  Her father was a businessman, so perhaps she came to this naturally.  Many things interested her; she became active in civic and church affairs and the DAR.  Music was a big part of her life. She was active in local music circles like other members of her family; Aunt Jo was accomplished in playing the mandolin.  She studied the mandolin with a well-known teacher from Italy.  Old family photos show most of the adults with their mandolins.  This appears to be the "in thing" at that time.  She met and married Roland Morrill a well-known horticulturalist in 1900.

The main farm, the home place, was located a few miles out side of Benton Harbor, Michgan. The house was big or so it seemed to a five-year-old.  In the parlor there was a huge cast iron wood stove, located in the middle of the room; everyone could have a place around it. There were pastures for the horses and cows and a huge barn stuffed with hay that could be chuted down to the cows on the first level.  It was an exciting place for little boys to explore.   Actually Uncle Roland and Aunt Jo had several farms with peaches and cantaloupes as their main crops.  There was a long row of huge cherry trees, good for climbing; they produced the biggest, sweetest Bing cherries I have ever tasted.  Below the barn there was a creek and a swimming hole, the kind that every kid dreams about. The Morrills had no children, but there were always lots of neighborhood children to enjoy the old swimming hole.

Uncle Roland was an inventor.  He and Aunt Jo drove to California in a mobile home of his own making, about 1910.  Judging from the snap shot, it wasn't much for looks, but it was far ahead of its time.  It survived the return trip, which was a good test considering how poor roads was early in this century.  One reason for this trip was to visit other fruit growers and to exchange ideas.  The packing shed at the melon farm I remember so well.  Melons would arrive in bushel baskets from the fields on horse-drawn wagons.  Workers emptied the melons onto a wide, canvas, conveyor belt that moved them along between long revolving brushes which removed the dirt and sand, rolling them along past holes of graduated sizes until the melon found a hole of the correct size to drop into. From here they were crated and trucked to the benton Harbor port (see Floating Palaces).  The over ripe melons were set aside, as they couldn't survive the conveyor or the trip to market.  These were the prized ones as far as the kids were concerned--they were the sweetest. The fragrance and and taste of a fully ripe cantaloupe is hard to beat.  These went to the "guillotine".  It was a wooden table with a long, wide-blade knife fastened upright.  The melon was grasped with both hands, but not by the kids, and forcefully thrust agaist the knife cutting it in two. The seed, juice and pulp slid down a hole in the tabletop, the seeds were the important things here.  The seeds were saved, dried, sorted and packaged during the winter.  Seed sales were a big part of the farm's business.

Uncle Roland developed the "Hearts-of-Gold" melon for which he was famous among growers. He was also known as the "Peach King". He gambled on a venture to establish the world's largest peach farm situated on 9000 acres in Eastern Texas.  He and the other investors were looking forward to big profits, however three years of killing frost put an end to those dreams. Although the Morrills had aquired a number of farms and had large holdings, they were financially ruined.  When Uncle Roland died in 1923 this was the situation.

Aunt Jo's business advisors urged her to declare bankruptcy.  She refused and gradually paid all of the debts and put the farms on a sound financial basis. She became a prominent figure in her own right, developing and commercializing the famous melons. After a few years she had built up a very big business, selling melons and seed.

Hers was a very different style of managing the business. Aunt Jo believed in diversifying the farms. Not all of the eggs were in the same basket so to speak.  There were the melons of course and the peaches. Some years there were strawberries and grapes.  Bad weather might affect one crop and the other would be spared. (letter to Peg)

In 1936 the Michigan State Horticltural Society conferred upon Mrs.Morrill a Certificate of Honor for so successfully bringing back and improving a once prominent Agricultural enterprise, a recognition never before given to a woman.

Our family moved to Los Angeles, California in 1932, and those family members remaining in Illinois soon followed.  One winter Aunt Jo and her farm manager, Frank Richdale, escaped the cold of the Michigan winter and visited us in Southern
California.  It was quite a sight to be in down town L.A. to see snow covered trains, like the California Zepher, arriving from Chicago, rumbling along Alameda Street with their bells clanging constantly, stopping traffic; slowly approaching the Santa Fe station.

Aunt Jo died in Chicago in 1938.  To our family she has always been a heroine.