The former chairman of the board at Elsberry MFA is an eyewitness to history. As a boy, Moebius Gentry watched the cooperative's formation at the first farmer meetings in local schoolhouses. As an adult, he had a hand in that history, too.

When my father, Ira Gentry, was clerk of the old Fink school board in 1927 or 1928, a tall man pulled up to our home in a black Model T Ford. He wore a black overcoat and black hat.

He introduced himself saying, "I am William Hirth. I am organizing a series of farm clubs in the state of Missouri with the idea of farmers cooperating together and purchasing a lot of their necessities of feed, seed, etc., in bulk lots so they will have more profit at the year's end." My father was impressed with Hirth's idea.

Hirth visited all around the Elsberry area and secured the use of several schoolhouses where he held meetings and organized farm clubs.

The first purchase the farm clubs made was half a railroad car of potatoes. It was set on the side track at Elsberry. I remember my father purchased three 100-pound sacks of cobbler potatoes for the winter.

The farm clubs then organized together and sold stock to purchase a small frame building at the corner of 3rd and Griffin Streets in Elsberry. Thus began Elsberry's Exchange.

I think William Palmer from Tick Ridge was the first manager. They purchased eggs, chickens, cream, hides, etc., and sold Dixie Feeds, Lange Brothers Fertilizer, seed corn, etc. Business increased and they were on their way.

After a few years, the manager had some trouble and they hired Jake Whiteside as manager and Ralph H. Graham as assistant manager. They purchased a livestock truck, and Graham started regular trips to St. Louis Ð hauling livestock and bringing back feed, seed, fertilizer, fencing, roofing, etc.

Business increased under Whiteside's management. Soon they needed more storage room, so they purchased a Quonset metal building and had it constructed in place of the old frame building. Livestock hauling had increased so much the board purchased another stock truck and hired Roland Hines as driver. Both trucks were kept busy. The MFA Elsberry Exchange had become a reliable business in the town of Elsberry.

O.C. Taylor, Charles Lahr, Howard Sledd and Vaughn Benear were on the board of directors for several years with O.C. Kessler as secretary.

A few years later, Fred Heinkel became president of the Missouri Farmers Association and expanded the services of the association to include purchasing of grain, manufacturing of feeds, blending of fertilizers, etc., under the banner of MFA.

The board of MFA began to purchase exchanges all over the state and form the farm clubs into one organization Ð MFA. Heinkel met with the Elsberry Exchange board and encouraged them to sell their business. MFA would also purchase the stock of the Farmer's Elevator of Elsberry, which the stockholders had consented to sell. Thus, we had a reliable organization to handle all the farm business and pay dividends at the year's end to the customers who had purchased or sold. The patrons of the two businesses decided to do this.

A new organization was formed, a new board of directors was elected, and they started selling bonds in the new MFA business to pay the debt of buying the other two businesses. We soon sold enough issues to complete the transaction, and MFA sent a man by the name of Gregory and his son to be managers of the new business.

They closed out the old exchange business, sold the property and started to expand the new by doing a lot of work on the old elevator and building a new office sales department.

In a short time, disaster struck. The elevator building burned to the ground. It was a terrible shock to the board of directors and patrons, but we faced the problem, put our hands to the task, got out and sold stock.

With the help of the MFA organization and the bond-selling efforts of T.C. Howard, Russell Mayes and Fred Hagemeier, we were able to build a new elevator building. Out of the ashes of that disaster developed the fine facility of service that we have today.