THE STORY BEHIND...
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A personal message from fred lindley, the darrtown Webmaster
My father, Albert Lindley, my mother, Bernice (Weiss) Lindley, my sister, Betty Jean Lindley, and I moved to the farm located at 3700 Hamilton-Richmond Road in Butler County, Ohio, in March, 1944. I was six and Betty was three.
That farm, which was situated about one mile south of Darrtown and known as the Sanders Stock Farm, was our "homeplace" for three decades. During those years, our father often mentioned that we lived in "Happy Valley." He would say things like, "Ah, it's a beautiful day in Happy Valley."
I assumed that Dad's references to Happy Valley were just a part of his positive nature; that he was simply expressing an appreciation for the good life that we four shared on that Darrtown Pike farm.
Flash forward 77 years. Dad and Mom have both passed on. Both Betty and I are retired.
As part of my retirment, I created the Darrtown website (in 2007) and have, since then, found pleasure in researching and adding new information about Darrtown events and people.
In pursuit of finding new items related to Darrtown, I recently subscribed to an Internet service that gives me access to copies of old newspapers.
My review of the old newspapers revealed that many 19th century newspapers included a "Community News" section, wherein the events of everyday citizens were reported from the communities in which they lived. The Hamilton (Ohio) newspapers regularly published articles from places in Butler County, like Scipio, Morning Sun, Venice, Williamsdale, Poast Town, Busenbark, etc.
And ... to my surprise, there were news reports from ... Happy Valley!
I discovered dozens of published stories about Happy Valley families. Furthermore, many of the Happy Valley names were names that are linked to Darrtown!
In an attempt to learn where Happy Valley was located, I enlisted the help of some other Darrtown "old-timers." We analyzed the names of the people that were included in the Happy Valley news articles. We then determined where those people lived in the 1920s and 30s, by sharing our memories and using other historical resources, such as maps, census reports, etc. As a result, the location of Happy Valley emerged.
Direct link to the Happy Valley Research page.
January, 2021
To see (some of) the documents used in our research and the logic that we applied to verify the existence and the likely location of this long-forgotten community, visit the Happy Valley research page.
The research page has maps, names of people, news articles, etc. Be sure to check it out.
