Sugar Creek Ladies’ Aid Society: Over 100 years of service and fellowship

By Danielle Bailey Submitted to Corner Post

The Sugar Creek Ladies’ Aid Society has dutifully served the small community of Rushville, Missouri, for over 100 years.

Ladies’ Aid Societies, also known as Soldiers’ Aid Societies, formed during the American Civil War. They were dedicated to providing supplies to troops and caring for the sick and wounded. Over the course of the war, between 7,000 and 20,000 societies were formed.

The construction of the Sugar Creek Ladies’ Aid Society building in Rushville began in the summer 1923. The eleven founding members raised a good portion of the entire cost — $4,000, or roughly $73,500 in today’s money — for the proposed building prior to construction without aid from any other organization. They made short work of the rest of the debt in the years that followed the building’s completion.

The building was dedicated on Sept. 20, 1925. It still stands next to Sugar Creek Christian Church today.

Well-attended ice cream socials were held at Sugar Creek in its earliest days. People from the Missouri towns of St. Joseph, Rushville, DeKalb, and nearby Atchison, Kansas, would come to enjoy homemade ice cream and scratch-made cakes and listen to speeches by political candidates. A once-a-year gala, the Ladies’ Aid put in extensive planning for the event. The members cooked the food, set everything up and broke everything down after the guests left. The ladies were known to be hard workers.

Other events, such as fox hunts, were also held in the Society’s earliest days. The Northwest Missouri Fox Hunters Association met at the hall, with one event in 1924 of particular note. A weeklong fox hunt was staged with 500 men and 200 dogs from 10 states registering. Nine women from the Ladies’ Aid brought cots and took turns sleeping and cooking all week for the hunters. The cooking went on all day and night to provide six full meals for the groups of hunters.

A hog, calf and chickens were butchered to help feed the hunters. It was the greatest undertaking the Society had taken on at that time.

The hall hosted a Fall Festival following the fox hunt in October 1924, a testament to the grit and hard work the ladies put in. A four-day affair that later was reduced to two in the wake of World War II, there was food, entertainment coming from as far as Kansas City, contests and film screenings.

While the hall no longer hosts fox hunts, the Ladies’ Aid does host a variety of other events. It is available for rent for events. The hall opens for three days over Memorial Day weekend to accommodate visitors to the Sugar Creek Cemetery. Food like pies and sandwiches, beverages and other items are always available for purchase. An Honor Guard ceremony is held annually midmorning on Memorial Day, presented by the American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars organization.

The most notable event the Ladies’ Aid hosts is its turkey supper.

By early September 1954, the Fall Festival had been canceled following a deadly polio outbreak. This led to the first Lord’s Acre Sale and turkey supper, which blossomed into the “Annual Turkey Dinner” in the late 1980s. All the traditional Thanksgiving fixings are offered during the supper. In recent years, the Ladies’ Aid started hosting quilt auctions and a country store filled with homemade pickles, jams and jellies, and crafts created by the Ladies.

The next turkey supper will be held from 4 to 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 2 at the hall in Rushville, Missouri.

The Ladies have accomplished many things over the years. A cookbook was released in 2013, the Society’s largest undertaking since the 1924 fox hunt. Quilting resumed in 2017, an exciting endeavor for the Ladies since many of their mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers quilted. Repairs have also been made to the hall, with a new roof and new windows being some of the more recent additions.

Many of the current members of the Sugar Creek Ladies’ Aid Society are descendants from the founding members. A fixture in the community, it provides women with fellowship and the opportunity to grow their skills. Its roots run deep and pull back those with ties to the valley time and time again.