Main Street Musings: Sorrells Farm Supply

Sorrells Elevator - January, 1996

The following information appears in Raymond's 125 Years of Memories Book, published in 1996:

Merrill Sorrells was born May 5, 1903 and died October 29, 1972. He married Nora Stillan who was born October 11, 1903 and died February 25, 1979. They were the parents of two children, Earl C. Sorrells, born February 4, 1928 and Dorothy Joan, born June 7, 1929. Dorothy married Clifford Betzold, of Nokomis on October 24, 1948 and they became parents of two children: Barbra Sue, born Dec. 4, 1954 and Bruce Lee, born April 11, 1959. They continue to reside in Nokomis.

Earl and Doris Marie Pocock, of Nokomis, were married June 20, 1948 and became the parents of four children. Mark Earl was born March 23, 1950. He has a Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He does plant breeding at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He married Nancy Rick of Ithaca and they have two sons, Shawn, 14 and Trevor, 8. Jean Marie was born December 21, 1951. She attended SIU at Carbondale for one year before marrying David Fuchs of rural Farmersville. They reside near Raymond with their three children: Gwen, 18, a student at EIU at Charleston; Rachael, a sophomore at Lincolnwood High School; and Garrett, a seventh grade student at Lincolnwood Junior High. Jean works part-time as a secretary in the family business and part-time as a seamstress at the General Store. Davis is part-owner of Agri-Tech, Inc. and a farmer. Brenda Sue was born February 4, 1954. She married Blake Cloyd of Raymond and they reside in Springfield with their three children: Ben, a freshman at Southeast High School; Bart, a sixth grader at Hazel Dell School; and Brooke, a second grader at Hazel Dell School. Brenda received her B.S. degree from SIU and works as a medical technologist at St. Johns Hospital in Springfield. Blake operates a construction business in Springfield. Kent Samuel was born January 27, 1959. He attended SIU Carbondale and earned a B.D. degree in Ag Economics. He manages the Raymond and Atwater Elevators and is also a commodity broker. He is married to the former Sandy Leonard of Farmersville, and they have two daughters, Tara, a fourth grader at Raymond Grade School and Megan, a first grader at Raymond Grade School. They reside in Raymond and Sandy works as a registered nurse at the Springfield Clinic in Springfield.

Earl and Doris Sorrells on Broad Street in Raymond in November, 1995.

Earl began farming the same year he graduated from high school. Merrill was very busy hauling livestock and selling farm supplies for famers. Merrill lived on the 200-acre farm homesteaded by the Ripley’s southeast of Raymond. To his acreage, he added the Fricke sisters’ 160 acres, the Hermann 80 acres, and the Ritchie 80 acres. Hedges lined most 80-acre tracts so he did a lot bulldozing hedges. Earl and the hired men cut posts and made the fence to keep the livestock. Cattle was pastured on the stalk fields in the fall.

Merrill liked and always owned new machinery. His choice of combines was an international 31 T, which would take a week for the men to assemble under the shade tree. Earl remembers the first F20 Farmall, on rubber, acquired in 1935. It could be rolled out of the shed by hand, and an extra road gear was added to get it to run up to 10 miles per hour. Oliver 70’s and Massey Harris combines took over in later years. Merrill always speeded up the tractors to get more speed and power. The throttles on the Oliver 70’s were extended about two inches. He also liked to use straight pipes -- sounded more powerful. Merrill preferred International plows purchased from Walter Zimmerman at Litchfield.

Merrill started with Ann Arbor balers made in Shelbyville. Before that came the stationary baler using a sweep rake on the front of a truck, then the Ann Arbor baler mounted on a truck which took us faster field to field, then Case balers with the shuttles, then New Holland automatic twine balers, then Minneapolis Moline wire balers, then John Deere wire balers, then International wire balers, and back to John Deere balers.

Sorrells Elevator - January 1996

Earl remembers all the hard work, but also all the fun of working with many young men and all the good dinners served by Mrs. Vanzant, Mildred Rebhan, Betty Fesser, Rosalie Fricke, Bonnie Gorman, Mrs. Sumner Wilson, Eileen Matli, Florence Krause, and Pearl Hitchings. The winter months were occupied by working in the shop making baler blocks, hog houses, and cutting logs in the timber for fencing.

Merrill started hauling in 1915 and enjoyed doing custom work for the neighbors. He had a machine for anything that needed done whether it was combining, baling, digging post holes, cutting trees, scooping coal at Hillsboro Glass, or picking up one animal or a whole load of livestock for St. Louis. He would grade ditches and haul coal for schools and houses.

Merrill and Nora moved to Raymond and built Sorrells Farm Supply in 1949. He started hauling livestock and grain with four semi-trailers to Indianapolis, Chicago, and St. Louis. Grain was picked up on the farm and he hauled bulk and bagged bean meal.

Earl and Doris married in June of 1948 and lived on the Sorrells farm. Earl did the farming and added to Merrill’s 440 acres by buying another 80 acres from Mae Stein, 40 acres from Mrs. Fricke and 80 acres from Otto King. Earl rented 80 acres in the Butler flat and 40 acres in Raymond Township owned by Frank Doyle.

Merrill passed away on October 29, 1972 from emphysema caused by all the dirt he had inhaled due to combining and baling. Nora and Earl ran the Farm Supply and farm until Nora died on February 25, 1979 from cancer.

David Fuchs took over farming 1,400 acres of the Sorrells Farm and feeding cattle. In 1982, an addition was built on to the farm supply building and Kent began commodity futures trading. Earl operated Sorrells Farm Supply adding many farm supply items including seeds, chemicals, tile, Master Mix Feeds, etc. He added five stock trailers, running 11 tractors, hauling hogs and cattle to Indianapolis, Logansport and Muncie Indiana, and to Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Louisville, Detroit, and other cities. Chemicals were hauled all over the United States including California and the Chesapeake Bay. Exported horses were hauled to Seattle.

In 1985, Sorrells purchased the Ralston Purina elevator on Broad Street and Kent took over as manager. This added much to their grain business as they had always picked up grain on the farm from farm grain systems. Due to increased grain hauling, Earl made the difficult decision to quite hauling livestock, which Sorrells had always done.

In August 1990, Sorrells Farm Supply purchased the Atwater Elevator, which had about a 500,000-bushel storage capacity.

On November 20, 1994, Earl moved the farm supply business to 203 Broad Street across from the elevator. Earl had purchased and remodeled the old bank building which was built in 1898. He continues to sell supplies and handle the books with Doris as his secretary.