On March 3, 1921, Edward Clayton Teach purchased a three-tract plot of land amounting to about 53 acres from Clark Overholser. This land would encompass the Teach Farm.
The farm named “ Brookhill Farm”, produced grain and hay for twelve to fifteen dairy cows, pigs, chickens, and a team of mules. It also produced eight acres of potatoes each year. Edward, his wife Lena (Shroyer) Teach, and their daughter Maude worked the farm. They bottled and delivered milk under the Brookhill Farm label to the residents of New Carlisle into the late 1930’s. The remaining un-bottled milk was sold in bulk to Borden’s Dairy in Springfield. Maude delivered the bottled milk in New Carlisle from a pickup truck. Two local youths, Aaron Cable and Jay Zinn helped with the route at separate times.
Mr. Teach sold potatoes and produce at the East Third Street Open Market in Dayton in the 1930’s and early 1940’s. After the open market ceased operation, he sold potatoes door-to-door in East Dayton into the early 1950’s. Verle McGillivary, the oldest grandson of the teaches’ remembers helping his grandfather load the 1936 Ford pickup truck with bushel and peck bags of potatoes and peddling them through the hilly streets of East Dayton. The D.W. Mikesell Company in Dayton purchased most of the potatoes not sold at market or door-to-door to make potato chips.
Mr. Teach health was on the decline in the early 1950’s and their daughter Maude with her husband Howard McGillivray and three children moved into the farmhouse and took over operation of the farm, while Mr. and Mrs. Teach moved into a small house on the farm facing Sigler Road, allowing them both to live the remainder of their lives on the farm. On October 24, 1960, Edward Teach passed away. Lena Teach continued to live on the farm until her death on May 14, 1976.
Maude, Howard, and the three children continued operation of the farm, but potato production was ceased and the dairy cows were reduced to just a few. Whole milk was no longer sold, but cream was separated and sold to the Howard Barnhart Creamery located in the existing white frame building on the northeast corner of the alley and Jackson Street, behind Milliken-Williams Insurance.
Howard and Maude McGillivray are both deceased. The farm is now owned by the three grandchildren of the Teaches’, marking 95 years in the family. There are no longer any livestock on the farm and the tillable acres are rented to a local farmer.
