HER-story: Honoring Sarah Ellen Pound
Excerpt from: “At Last, She Can Live in a Big Brick House.” The Indianapolis Sunday Star, 7 Nov. 1909.
Miss Pound’s history is interesting. She was born in Montgomery County, Ohio. When she was 10 years of age she came to Indiana with her parents, and the family settled in Elkhart County. It was during this year that Miss Pound first made money for herself. She took work as a “hired girl” with a neighboring family. She received $1.50 a week, which was all that a matured young woman should have received for the same work. And the work was hard.
In her own words, “I grew into a farmer. I took to it naturally, here. I accomplished what I have done with all kinds of discouragement. It was about that time, though, that I thought I’d like to be a school teacher, but when I thought of how a school teacher’s work is done inside a house, I gave it up. Then I thought of sewing, and that was worse. I can’t live in the house all the time. I want the pure air, and I have no doubt that it has been the tonic that has kept my health good.”
“You see, all my neighbors thought that I was foolish. They thought John was right, and I’d never make the farm pay. One of them came over to me one day and said he’d be glad to help me and give me advice for running the place. You see I had set my head, and I wasn’t thinking like he was. He meant to tell me things as a neighbor, but I thought he wanted to be my hired hand. I said to him:
‘Well, if you can’t run your own farm, I don’t want you to try to run mine.’
He was out of sorts with me for a long time before I found out what the trouble was.”
Another proposition upon which Miss Pound settled early was that her barn should be built before she had a new house. The barn would help to pay for the house. So she built a big bank barn, and she put in a windmill, and she arranged to have two ponds back of the barn where the ducks and geese swim and squawk to their hearts’ content. After that, she was ready to build her house.
“Perseverance is the greatest asset anyone can have. If you are honestly intended to do something, and if you keep trying to do it in spite of what people may say about you, then chances are you will have success. There were many times in my life when it didn’t seem that I could succeed, but I kept on trying.”
“There’s one funny thing about taking advice. Advice is the cheapest thing you can find. Everybody will give you advice without your asking for it, and some folks are so overloaded with it they hunt you up and tell you what you ought to do. I find that advice is a very good thing - not to take. If I had taken the advice I wouldn’t be building that house. The best kind of advice is your own, provided you’ve got the perseverance to test it. Of course, you can get a great many good ideas about what people tell you, but the best advice that you would advise yourself.”
