HISTORY

My name is Mary Ann Jennings - I am the oldest granddaughter of William Franklin Vice and Effie Lena Buckner Vice, the couple who farmed The Vice Farm 4 miles north and 1 mile east of Carnegie, Oklahoma.

I want to start by giving you a little history of what we call The Vice Family Farm.  After William and Effie's marriage on October 22, 1916 in Snyder, Oklahoma they settled in Nacogdoches, TX.  In 1920 they moved to Devol, OK, near William's mother's family.  Farming was good in 1920; however, the price of cotton was one and one-half to two cents a pound.  The Vices decided to store the bales of cotton on the farm.  During a thunderstorm, lightening set fire  to the bales of cotton on the farm, and in two weeks all the cotton bales had burned.  A year later William, Effie, Virdeen and Milton settled in Gracemont, OK.  In 1924 the family moved three miles west of Anadarko, OK where James Calvin Vice was born March 24, 1925.  It was then they purchased a 160 acre farm four miles north and one mile east of Carnegie (The Vice Family Farm).   On this farm in 1928, they built a modern seven room home. The farm was productive with various crops of cotton, alfalfa, feed, broom corn and wheat. 
 
On September 9, 1932 William died of tuberculosis leaving Effie a widow with four children to raise and a farm to run.  In 1933 at the age of 4 the youngest child, Wilbur, was killed in a car accident with his mother at the wheel.   Virdeen cared for her younger brothers while their mother was out plowing and working the fields.  J.C. thought the sun rose and set on his sister.  Effie always had chickens and J.C. claimed that when Virdeen would go and get the mail on her way back she'd pick up a chicken and have it skinned and ready to fry or bake before she got back from the mailbox.  Effie lived on  this farm until her death Feb. 7, 1989, at the age of 93.  

In 1948 J.C. married Virginia Clark from Henryetta Oklahoma, who was a young school teacher in Carnegie.  They had two children Mary Ann and Kent while living on the farm.  In 1953 the family moved to Ft. Morgan, Colorado. 

Near the end of her years Effie began leasing the farm to local farmers and after her death her son J.C. continued leasing the farm to these local farmers.  In 2007 the house was taken down and a young Mennonite man who was to marry soon was given anything he could salvage, which was most of the old house with its good, solid wood.  He built a beautiful home and I'll share a picture of it with you. 

J. C. died suddenly of heart failure on March 3, 2002.  In 2008 Virginia's health began to fail and she was moved to assisted living.  In order to continue the high quality of assisted living care Virginia has required her children found it necessary, with a true feeling of loss, to sell the farm to the longtime lessors and family friends on March 22, 2012.  Gayle and Paul Edward Knauss purchased the farm, but the biggest tale to tell here is the fact that Gayle is the daughter of Utah Jones "Red" who was J.C.'s longtime running bud in "the day" and life long friend.  J.C.'s children and the Knauss' find it moving and special that the families remain connected, even though their fathers have passed, through The Vice Family Farm (or known now by the Knauss' and the community of Carnegie as "The Vice Place").

Picture of the Knauss family: