[171] Hardeman County Farm Joins Ranks Of State's Century Farms Program

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 26, 2010
CONTACT: Caneta Hankins, Center for Historic Preservation, 615-898-2947


HARDEMAN COUNTY FARM JOINS RANKS OF STATE’S CENTURY FARMS PROGRAM

Keller-Blanton Farm Recognized for Agricultural Contributions

(MURFREESBORO)—The Keller-Blanton Farm, located in Hardeman County, has been designated as a Tennessee Century Farm, reports Caneta S. Hankins, director of the Century Farms Program at the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University.
The Century Farm Program recognizes the contributions of Tennessee residents who have owned and kept family land in production continuously for at least 100 years.
The history of the railroad in West Tennessee was an important part of the life of William Clifton and Alma Blalock Keller, founders of the Keller-Blanton Farm. Born in Toone, Tenn., in 1877, Clifton remembered seeing engineer Casey Jones and hearing the famous whistle of his train. Clifton moved to Whiteville with his father and brothers and sisters after their mother died. Alma Blalock was born in 1880 near Whiteville. When about 8 years old, she remembered seeing men working on the railroad with horse and mule teams. She rode a flat car behind a train engine to Cooley’s Crossing, where the railroad intersected with the old road from Bolivar to Whiteville and on to Somerville through Cooley’s farm which she and her husband would purchase in 1908.
The couple had four children, two of whom survived to adulthood. On 108 acres, the family raised corn, cotton, wheat, hogs, cattle, tomatoes, potatoes and hay. Clifton built the family home in 1912, along with a barn and silo with stables for mules and horses and a dairy for a Jersey herd, a house to store sweet potatoes and a shop with a forge over the years. In 1923, Highway 64 was built through the farm. During the 1930s, Clifton purchased 100 more acres, and in 1938, one of the farms biggest changes, electricity, occurred, allowing Clifton to purchase electric milkers for his dairy cows. After Clifton purchased his first tractor, he stopped raising mules.
In 1946, Clifton and Alma passed the land to their son, Clifford Eugene Keller. He and his wife, Hazel Bowman Keller, along with the elder Kellers, were charter members of the Hardeman County Farm Bureau. Clifford and Hazel had two children, Barbara and Jean. The family raised cotton, corn, soybeans, strawberries, squash, wheat, hay and Holstein and Jersey cattle. Also a progressive farmer, Clifford participated in land-conservation practices and won the owner-operator division of the Save/Enrich Our Soil Contest in Hardeman County. During the New Deal days in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps terraced the land, and Clifford also built ponds to stop erosion.
In 1982, Clifton and Alma’s granddaughter, Barbara Blanton, and her husband, Charles Gordon Blanton, acquired 250 acres of the original farm. Charles also owns a farm near Toone that belonged to his great-grandfather, Steven Hardy Gibson. In total, the couple owns 1,400 acres of farm and timber. Barbara and Charles have two sons, Leland Keller and Charles Dana. Charles occupies the founders’ house and raises corn and beans on the farm.
Barbara, Hazel and Alma represent three generations of membership in the local Home Demonstration Club. The matriarch of the family, Alma, died in 1977 at age 97, having seen both railroad and highways built in Hardeman County. The Keller-Blanton Farm is the seventh Century Farm to be certified in Hardeman County and is linked historically to the Albert Lloyd Keller Century Farm in Toone, which was established by John Keller of North Carolina in 1870. One of his sons, Abraham, was the father of William Clifton Keller.
Since 1984, the Center for Historic Preservation at MTSU has been a leader in the important work of documenting Tennessee’s agricultural heritage and history through the Tennessee Century Farms Program. For more information about the Century Farms Program, please visit www.tncenturyfarms.org. The Center for Historic Preservation also may be contacted at Box 80, MTSU, Murfreesboro, Tenn., 37132 or 615-898-2947.

• ATTENTION, MEDIA: To interview the farm’s owner or request jpegs of the farm for editorial use, please contact the CHP at 615-898-2947.




Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. This fall, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.