Rankin Clemmons, who died last week at the residence of D. B. Cawby, a tenant on one of his farms, near South Elkhorn, Ky., where he had made his home for nearly a year, was the largest individual holder of lands in the blue-grass region of Kentucky, probably the wealthiest citizen of Lexington County, and a man of many eccentricities.
Mr. Clemmons owned between 8,000 and 9,000 acres of land in Mercer, Jessamine, Woodford, and Fayette Counties, of which about 1,100 acres are in the latter.
All of Mr. Clemmons’ lands are of high quality, none being valued at less than $100 per acre, while much of it is estimated to be worth from $125 to $150 an acre. In addition, Mr. Clemmons is understood to have held considerable personalty, including cash, pending deals for more land, and his estate is estimated at nearly $1,500,000.
A notable feature of Mr. Clemmons’ acquisition of great wealth was the fact that he had never engaged in speculation or dabbled in city property, or stocks and bonds, but had amassed his wealth from the direct products of the soil.
His whole life was given to the accumulation of his fortune, his entire being seeming to be centered to that end. He had apparently no other interests, few attachments, no recreations, and many eccentricities, and by the latter he was most generally known in this county.
He had up to the end of his life gone barefooted in the summertime, except when he came to town; had[{59}] never bought a newspaper or book; had never ridden in an automobile or upon an electric car, used a telephone, or, as far as is known, sent a telegraph message.
He was, however, a shrewd and alert observer, and kept well informed on current events through association with others and perusal of newspapers which happened to come into his hands without cost, and was not averse to utilizing modern farming implements in his agricultural operations. However, his life business was that of agricultural financier rather than farmer, he personally working little of his vast domain of blue-grass land.
The farming upon his property was done almost entirely by tenants, though he himself had daily done hard manual labor throughout his long life. Only last fall, when eighty-nine years old, he was cutting briers upon his place just before he became confined with the illness which caused his death.
A peculiarity was that he would never raise tobacco, not even on the shares with his tenants, as is the almost universal custom in the burley belt. If a man wanted to raise tobacco upon his land, Mr. Clemmons would rent him the ground at forty dollars an acre.
“I don’t know anything about raising tobacco,” he would say, “but if you want to raise it upon my land you can go on and do so, and give me your note at forty dollars an acre per annum, which people say tobacco land is worth, and pay it when you sell the crop.”