This story first appeared in our June 2018 newsletter and is one of my favorites.
Have you heard about the legendary Blue Rock, located on the Jaeger homestead? In 1955, Henry Jaeger’s eldest sons were growing up and moving to Houston to seek employment opportunities and Lillie was pregnant with Lanis. Henry was growing increasingly concerned with having to provide for his family through farm work. Like his sons, he saw a better future in moving to the city. He set about selling the Jaeger farm. Now, this was at the time when the family lived in the “big” house (the house Delores and Jack moved into). According to Henry’s daughter, Jeanette, Henry’s older sister, Ida, believed in fortune tellers. She came to Henry and told him that he must not sell the farm because there was a blue rock somewhere on the farm. Under the rock, there was a buried fortune.
Ida was a tough woman who didn’t take no for an answer. Henry decided not to sell the land, although it’s likely that pressure from Lillie was more influential than Ida’s rock. Ida never came out and said where the rock was, but that did not deter sisters Edith and Jeanette from looking for it. Edith sincerely hoped to find the treasure so that they could install indoor plumbing!
So, Jeanette, age 14, talked Edith, age 9, into crawling under the remains of an old fireplace to search. While trying to move the old fireplace rocks, Lillie saw them through an opening and chased them out with a belt. Nobody else tried to find the rock after that, but Edith admits to having occasionally looked through the openings, hoping to find it. So, is the blue rock real or just another tall tale? If you should ever come across it, give one of us a holler!