Former Mentone resident Alice Keirn holds up a photograph of Everett Besson’s egg farm at Mentone from 1950. It’s one of the items she’s including in an exhibit on the town’s egg history at the Mentone Historical Museum, which will be on display for the first time during Rotors Over Mentone on Saturday, Sept. 10. InkFreeNews photos by Leah Sander.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

MENTONE — Alice Keirn is seeking to preserve Mentone’s history after a request from her late friend.

“I had a friend, Linda Cochran, that was very active in the (Lawrence D. Bell Aircraft Museum and Mentone Historical Museum in Mentone),” said Keirn. “She looked at me a year ago in March or April and said, ‘We need to do the story about all the little hatcheries and layer farms that made Mentone the Egg Basket of the Midwest.'”

“Her next words were: ‘If we don’t do it, it won’t be done because nobody will remember,'” added Keirn.

Cochran passed away in August 2021, and Keirn, a former Mentone resident, wants to fulfill that hope. She’s compiling photos, articles and more related to Mentone’s past egg history for an exhibit to go up at the Mentone Historical Museum beginning during Rotors Over Mentone, set for Saturday, Sept. 10.

The display at the museum at 210 S. Oak St., Mentone, will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on that day.

Keirn started seeking information for the project early this year.

“I put a thing out on (Mentone News & Information’s Facebook page) wanting stories of the little farmers that had chickens or had hatcheries. Some of them had both. And I started getting answers back in, and I think I have close to 20 that have said they have things,” she said.

One of the farms to be featured in the exhibit was owned by Everett Besson. His farm was actually next to where Keirn lived at Mentone.

It was Besson’s grandson that gave Keirn the information he inherited after his grandparents passed away.

His other relatives were going through their possessions and “they were throwing all this stuff about the farm away,” said Keirn of what the grandson told her.

For the Everett Besson farm as for the other ones in the exhibit, there will be an individual binder displayed. The Everett Besson one includes photos of his family working on their farm and at the local egg show at Mentone.

That egg show ran from 1935 to 1959 in town, save for three years during World War II when it didn’t go on, said Keirn. She has ribbons and trophies from the show that people gave her to put in the exhibit.

The Mentone egg show included the crowning of an egg king and queen. One of the former queens, Diana (Ballenger) Nellans, provided her crown to be used in the museum.

Another woman who knew Keirn was working on the exhibit found a late 1940s Farm Journal magazine article off eBay. It turned out to mention Nellans’ grandparents and traces the journey of an egg from their farm to a consumer.

“And it follows the egg from their farm on the truck and then where (the egg) was delivered in New York … the street wasn’t wide enough for the truck to even go down. It went on horse and wagon, and it ends up in a lady’s skillet. But (the article) breaks down how much money these people got,” said Keirn.

Keirn also detailed to InkFreeNews some egg history facts.

“In 1947, there were 93,377,376 eggs sold in Kosciusko County,” she said. “Manwarings started into chickens in 1911; Creighton Brothers started in 1925. Manwaring merged with Strauss Elevator in 1969 and became Midwest Poultry.”

Kralis Brothers Foods took old hens who’d been at the farms and processed them, with the meat going to places like Campbell Soup Co., she said.

Keirn noted Creighton Brothers is the only one of all that she’s researched to still have chickens. She herself worked for Creighton for more than 45 years.

She spoke with Eddie Creighton, the son of one of the founders of the company, Hobart Creighton, about why Mentone was known so much for its egg production in the past.

Eddie Creighton said his father noted that raising chickens was cheaper than swine or cattle, leading local farmers to become involved in egg production.

“And everything that you needed for the chickens was right in this area. You didn’t have to ship anything in,” said Keirn.

She credited new government rules regarding egg production with helping shut down small egg farms in the area.

“What happened with all the little hatcheries and the layer farms was when new regulations came in from the health board and stuff, a lot of farmers didn’t meet those, so that’s when it went to the bigger chicken houses,” said Keirn, mentioning that was in the latter half of the 20th century.

Keirn still is welcoming items for her exhibit. Though Keirn has set Sept. 10 as her date to get it up, she said she’ll still accept items after that.

“There will never be a deadline, because families are going to keep finding information and it can always be added,” she said.

If people have stuff they want to submit for the exhibit, they should contact Keirn at 574-371-5711.

Those who want to see the exhibit, but can’t during Rotors Over Mentone, may stop by during the Mentone Historical Museum’s regular hours from 1-5 p.m. Sundays through the end of September. Otherwise, people may visit during other times by stopping by the museum and using the contact information on the door to get a volunteer to come by and show them in, said Keirn.

A photo of Carroll Eiler’s egg operation at Mentone will be displayed.