In this storied town, your neighbors are your friends

In the 1950s and '60s, when kids in Mansfield had a birthday, they made a beeline to the General Store for a free candy bar. Store owner Charlotte McKee remembers they usually showed up in a little pack of friends, as if eating it front of someone made it taste better.

"They'd all be standing there and I'd say, 'Just wait, your turn's coming,' " McKee said.

Now 93, McKee laughs at the memories she accumulated since 1932, when she moved from Farmer City to Mansfield as a young bride. She spent most of her adult life working in the General Store from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. six days a week, selling everything from shoes to overalls to ground beef. She knew everyone in town.

"Oh yes. Yes!" she said. "Good people. I wish I'd written a book."

Mansfield, 6 miles west of Mahomet, could indeed be the subject of an interesting book.

Its past includes being home to the world's largest goose farm, three failed bank robberies and a link to a man who would go on to become vice president of the United States.

But its history also shows great community spirit , like the Halloween Jamborees in the 1940s that featured a torchlight parade, marching band, floats, cake walk, fortune telling and auction.

And the Kentucky Picnic, which during its heyday drew crowds estimated at 3,000 by some and as many as 6,000 by others, to the Mansfield Park for a day of picnics and bluegrass and country music.

This town of about 950 residents in the northern tip of Piatt County, has an interchange on Interstate 74 that offers a distant hum of traffic, but within the village it's about as quiet as quiet can be.

"You can send your kids off to school when they're 5 years old and know no one's going to nab them. It's safe," said Dorothy Eddings, a lifelong Mansfield resident and retired librarian. "It's quiet. I feel safety here. And I like my safe town."

In the beginning

Mansfield was founded by a man who had been president of Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., a staunch abolitionist, a U.S. general in the Civil War and an Indiana legislator. John Lutz Mansfield decided to buy the site that is now Mansfield for its level ground and beautiful views in 1870.

He surveyed the land, laid out the town and accommodated the two railroads, which intersect at the village. He died in 1876, but his wife and children had an influence on the town for several decades.

Mansfield's tombstone is located in Mansfield Cemetery, south of town, with hundreds of other residents and businessmen who helped create a burgeoning town that at the turn of the 20th century had its own village band with 24 members, five churches, banks, hotel, blacksmith shop, hardware stop, harness shop, novelty store, implement dealer, meat market, dry goods store – and more.

One of the most interesting enterprises was W.H. Fierke's goose farm, which residents claim was the largest in the world. Historic photos show a parade of a 1,000 geese marching down the street from Fierke's farm on the north edge of town to the railroad depot, to be shipped to markets in Chicago and New York. Fierke, who became known as the Goose King, protected the feet of the geese by walking them through soft tar and then sand. A story in the Mansfield Express from the early 1900s estimated more than 10,000 "squawkers" were kept at the farm.

At the end of the goose season, Fierke transformed his farm for fowls into a working livestock farm with cattle and sheep.

Another source of pride for Mansfieldians was the People's State Bank, which was one of the few in the state to withstand the Depression. According to a newspaper account, the bank closed only one day, and that was when the president declared a bank moratorium.

The bank withstood three robberies, all of which failed. One in 1917 resulted in a historic photo that shows the town constable and a crowd of residents standing around the bank safe, lying on its side in the street. Police speculated the thieves had put the safe in the back of a truck, and when it hit a rough spot in the road, the safe slid out.

Town stalwart

The General Store on Mansfield's main street, which is actually called Jefferson Street, has been there for 99 years.

McKee and her late husband sold it to Terry and Susan Thomas in 1979, and the Thomases have kept the unique atmosphere of an old-time store, complete with a coffee shop area, specialty ice cream, groceries, antiques and miscellaneous gift items and cards.

Terry Thomas said the couple became acquainted with Mansfield while helping his in-laws build a home there. When he got to know the McKees, they learned the store was for sale and worked out a deal.

"I just fell in love with (Mansfield)," Thomas said. "I fell in love with the people."

He said the General Store's merchandise is somewhere in between a convenience store and a grocery store. At one time, it offered sleigh rides for the holiday season.

And on occasion, he said, when working parents in Champaign had a child get sick at school and couldn't get home, they'd call the General Store and Thomas would go to school and get the child and keep the little one at the store until the parents could get home.

"A lot of people use us," Thomas said. "That's what we're here for. We figure you're short something, we're here. Gas is expensive; no sense in driving that far."

Dorothy Eddings can drive up and down the streets of Mansfield and point out the highlights, like the Mansfield Park and the site of the former ice house and the remaining pond that produced the ice in the wintertime. Her family lived just north of town on a dairy farm but she remembers going to Miller's Restaurant as a teenager in the '40s and having a chocolate Coke for a nickel.

"They also had a dance floor so some of us would dance," she said. "They had a nickelodeon. And that was during the war, so there were a lot of love songs playing. We had a great time there. When I had children, we'd go there every Sunday after church. They had good meals and a good cook."

Eddings' brother lives on the farm that was once the goose farm, and she can also point out the site of the house built by W.D. Fairbanks, a prominent Mansfield banker, whose son Charles W. Fairbanks served as vice president of the United States under Theodore Roosevelt from 1905to '09.

Eddings said her daughter lives in Baltimore, and she loves to visit her, but she'd never leave Mansfield. She loves her home.

"You know, you can count on your neighbors," Eddings said. "If you're sick they're there for you. We had a fire one time that burned down the garage and my goodness, they were all right there to help me. And when my husband died, they were there for me.

"When you go out and work in the garden, you can yell at your neighbors and go over and talk to them," Eddings said. "It's just friendly."