PARAGON, Ind. – The roots in agriculture don’t get much longer than an Indiana family still farming ground that first belonged to their ancestors in 1823.

The Harry Goss Dow and Bessie M. Dow Farm in Morgan County was recently one of three farms to be awarded the bicentennial award under the state’s annual Hoosier Homestead program. The same farm was also given the centennial award for having another parcel of tilled soil in the family for the past 100 years.

Patricia Dow said she and her husband, Philip, couldn’t be happier than carrying on a family tradition since they married in 1965.

She grew up on a farm her father purchased in nearby Monrovia after returning from World War II. She and husband met from being in 4-H and competing against each other with their pigs in the show arena.

“We are so proud to continue being in agriculture as our ancestors were when they came up here. There’s just no place my husband and I have ever wanted to live other than on the farm,” she said.

The original 80 acres of ground was purchased by Ephraim Goss after he married his first cousin, Sally, when their families from Germany landed in North Carolina and then settled between Indianapolis and Bloomington.

In 1850, Sally inherited her husband’s estate, and then 25 years later she deeded the property to two of her sons, William and Lafayette.

By 1941, just one-third of the land remained in the family. The rest had been passed down or sold from generation to generation.

Two-thirds of the original ground was brought back together in 1985, though, when one-third of the land was purchased by Harry Goss Dow and his sister, Bessie Dow, whose third great uncle was the original owner of the entire parcel.

After Harry passed away in 1985, his son, Philip, and wife, Patricia, purchased his siblings’ share of the farm and his mother’s half of the property in 2007.

Eventually, the remaining ground outside the family’s lineage.

“That’s our roots and that’s where we hope that our grandchildren and great grandchildren, eventually, settle down here, too,” Patricia Dow said.

Philip, 78, and his sons, Paul and Chad, now farm 442 acres of rented ground and other land that used to be owned by his great grandfather, George Goss and grandfather, Charles Dow.

Paul Dow said all the parcels touching each other are used for raising corn, soybeans, hay and mostly Angus cattle. “We just enjoy the rural nature and the heritage of the farm,” he said.

After getting married, Paul and his wife, Molly, moved to nearby Martinsville but 10 years later built a house on the family farm.

Paul Dow, 53, said he wanted to move out of the city to give his three young sons the same experience of growing up in a rural setting.

Some of his best childhood memories at the farm include he and his slightly older brother going raccoon hunting with their grandfather, who always brought his Bluetick Coonhounds along to help bag the animals. 

“We would play in the creeks, climb the trees, be in the barns and dare each other to grab the electric fence. You name it. We kind of did it all,” he said.

Paul Dow said he and his brother also used labor shortages back then to earn money during the summer by mowing the yards of elderly neighbors and baling hay at farms needing a helping hand or two. They returned home every evening to help their father bale hay.  

He said both of them saved enough of their earnings to pay for new pick-up trucks entirely with cash while in college. “We would just go out to work and come back.  We’d have a good time at night then go back to working again,” he said.

Paul Dow said his oldest son, Austin, is now a machinist after graduating from Vincennes University while his other sons, Garett and Peyton, are attending Purdue University.

Garett is majoring in horticulture and botany while the youngest, Peyton, is studying finance. “It worked out,” he said.

There are no original buildings left on the farm.

Dow, who’s a full-time construction contractor, said he tore down the oldest structures remaining on the farm over a 10- to- 15-year period because they were in very poor condition and no longer useful in modern farming.

“Equipment keeps getting bigger and bigger. When we were building new buildings, they were just in the way,” he said.