Dates

• Existence: 1907 - 2004

Biography

Farm wife Velma Ann Carney was born in 1907 in Casey, Iowa, the daughter of Burton and Alice Knauer Crandall. She grew up in the Casey and Adair area where she attended rural schools and graduated from Adair High School in 1925. After graduating Crandall taught in rural schools.

Crandall married Lloyd Carney in 1931. The Carneys lived in the house and farmed the land that belonged to his parents. They raised cattle, hogs, and chickens, making money through the sale of cream and eggs. After two years of poor corn harvests, Lloyd Carney attended a meeting in 1936 where he was introduced to a new crop, soybeans. With a successful soybean crop and livestock the Carneys were able to save money and began looking for a farm of their own to buy. In 1938 they bought 80 acres.

The Carneys moved to Adair County in 1968 and farmed there until their retirement. Lloyd Carney farmed approximately 500 acres, 200 head of cattle and some hogs, and Velma Carney cooked, kept the books, washed the clothes, and drove the tractor. In the late 1950s and 1960s they remodeled the farm house with electricity, a new bathroom, kitchen, and furnace. In her new kitchen Carney replaced the old cook stove with a new electric stove. They built a house in Adair in 1973 and sold the home farm. With land left the Carneys continued to farm for another two years until they sold out in 1975 and retired. The retired couple traveled to Texas and Florida in the winter.

Lloyd Carney was hospitalized in January 1988 and was moved to a nursing home the next month. He died in September 1990. Velma Carney continued to live in her home in Adair from 1990 until 2000. After a heart attack in 1996, she was admitted to the Health Center in Adair for the winters of 1996 and 1997. She was again hospitalized for congestive heart failure in 2000 and remained in the Adair Health Center until her death in 2004.

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