Tillotson archive yields mystery photo of Troth Tractor & Equipment of Omaha

by baggyparagraphs

So far, it’s impossible to explain why a photo of a tractor dealership was included in the archive of Tillotson Construction Co. We await further illumination.

Newspaper searches first reveal Troth Tractor & Equipment Co. in 1946 in Omaha. The dealership offered an integrated approach to farming. A classified ad in the World-Herald advises readers: Troth Tractor and Equipment, Authorized Ford-Ferguson Sales and Service. 2515 O St., MA 7958

Henry Ford and Harry Ferguson collaborated on the Ford-Ferguson 9N tractor, examples of which are seen here. This was around the same time that Raymond Loewy and Associates, of New York, designed the new Farmall for International-Harvester.

Wood Bros. Pickers (see sign) refers to the Wood Brothers Thresher Co.’s single-row corn harvester that the tractor towed along. Picked corn would be lofted into a wagon that trailed the picker. Wood Brothers was founded in Minnesota in 1893 and moved to Des Moines in 1899. A Facebook post provides further information:

Wood Bros. Thresher Company marketed their corn pickers on their own and then sold to the Harry Ferguson Co., a part of Ford MotorCompany. 

WHY PAY CASH? asks Troth in this 1949 ad. 

New improved Ford tractors and Wood Brothers pickers cost you less per acre and mean more income. Buy your new improved Ford tractor, Dearborn equipment, and Wood Brothers corn picker now. Up to 2 years to pay. Very low budget rates. A farm plan to fit your every need. Let the Ford tractor pay its own way and keep the profit in your pocket. We are easy to deal with. See us today. Omaha’s Ford Farming Headquarters.

The Dearborn Disc Plow and other implements were produced by the Dearborn Farm Equipment, agriculture division of Ford Motor Co. Note the neon sign in the showroom’s plate glass.

H.B. Smith, next door at 2517 O St., also appears to be a postwar addition to the O Street tableau.

To repeat, we can’t explain this photo. But if you told us that it was included because Uncle Mike Tillotson loved Ford Motor Co. so very much, that would be good enough.

Pages 3 and 3A of Tillotson Construction record, 1947-1948, including Cavalier, N.D.; Richland, Nebr.; and Montezuma, Kan.

by baggyparagraphs

Pages 3 and 3A of the Tillotson Construction Company’s construction record duplicate pages 2 and 2A from a previous post, but these are the complete scans of full long pages. The extra information concerns Cavalier, N.D.; Richland, Nebr.; and Montezuma, Kan.

Remodeling in Bruno, Nebr. finds Van Ness on the job for Nye & Jenks

by baggyparagraphs

The Great Depression forced many changes in the early 1930s. For one, the Nye & Jenks Grain Co. decided to get out of the lumber business at its Bruno, Nebr. location. To that end, in April of 1934, men were tearing down the lumber sheds at the company’s location in that little Butler County burg. The plan was to use the lumber on hand, along with some hauled to Bruno from Cedar Bluffs–which lay 25 miles distant in Saunders County–to put up a storage annex.

Nye & Jenks was an Omaha company, and a cursory search of archived newspapers suggests Van Ness Construction Co. was their preferred contractor. There was more activity at other eastern Nebraska locations such as Fremont, Wahoo, Cedar Bluffs, and Brainard.

Van Ness, of course, employed Charles H. Tillotson and his son, Reginald O. Tillotson. In 1934, Reginald was around 26 years old, newly married to Margaret I. McDunn, but not yet a father. Their first son, Charles J. Tillotson, was born in 1935.

After her 1925 graduation from Wayne State College, Margaret had taught in Lynch, Nebr. for a time, and coincidentally Nye & Jenks appears to have had an elevator there, too.

Charles H. Tillotson died in 1938. Reginald passed away in 1960, and Margaret in 1995. Charles J. died in February 2026.

Reginald’s notes in a photo album retrieved from family archives indicate the men seen above are Dean Essex, R.O. Tillotson, Rupert Hammonds, Tony Proskovec, and C.H. Tillotson. We don’t think the listing proceeds from left to right, though, and are unable to say just who is who. We think R.O. and C.H Tillotson are two of the three wearing the working garb. As for the others, we couldn’t learn anything that would pin down their identities.

Patches of snow on the ground suggest a late-winter or early spring date for the photo. The men are dressed for a chilly day, although the sunny moment was somewhat balmy.

The Peoples Banner, a weekly newspaper published in Butler County, gave this update on June 21 (using one of the many variant spellings for Nye & Jenks Grain Co.:

The work of re-modeling the Nye, Jenks & Co. elevator in Bruno has been completed. The elevator now has a capacity of 30,000 bushels. The company has discontinued the lumber business and will handle grain and coal from now on.

At the same time, Anton Proskovec left Bruno to work at the Nye & Jenks elevator in Funk, Nebr., a town 165 miles to the southwest. It was a seven-week assignment, though, as the Peoples Banner reported him back on Aug. 9.

Ed Dvorak, who has been manager of the Nye, Jenks & Co. grain elevator for a number of months [since the previous August], left Saturday for his home at Howells [40 miles due north]. V.A. Proskovec will have charge of the business.”

Our insertions in the above passage are in brackets.

We think V.A. Proskovec and Anton Proskovec are the same person, and that would also include the Tony Proskovec of the photo.

An interesting, earlier note from the Brainard Clipper, the paper in the town just south of Bruno, intimates just how tough the times were indeed. The report of March 9, 1933 says:

The Farmers Elevator are not buying any grain, while due to arrangements made in the company’s head offices, the Nye & Jenks Grain Co. are able to buy up to $25 worth of grain from any one farmer, paying for it in the Co’s scrip. This scrip is made payable on or before April 1, and is acceptable by many of the wholesale houses thereby making it practical for merchants to accept it in trade. The scrip is issued in amounts of $5 or less. 

We leave the reader to discern the full implications.

It would be just four years before Tillotson Construction Co. was formed and turned its attention to large elevators made of reinforced concrete.

‘Huge strides’ prompt extreme reactions in Lincoln elevator demo project

by baggyparagraphs

A representative of CL Construction, of Lincoln, sends this aerial photo and reports “huge strides in the demolition of the grain elevators at 3001 Cornhusker Hwy. in Lincoln.” News of the project first broke late in 2024. The demolition site will be offered for redevelopment.

Lincoln’s 10/11 News visited early in 2026 for an update. Comments on the channel’s report range from sublime to ridiculous. These are unedited for style or factual correctness.

Sublime: @dougnagel1155 “What weird comments. It’s just time to move on. When I was a kid hauling grain to this elevator, it was on the outskirts of town. Now it’s pretty much in the middle of town. Farmers are not bringing the crops to Lincoln like they used to. There’s other elevators north of town that are easier to haul to and avoid city traffic. I’m sure the Lincoln site isn’t profitable anymore.”

Ridiculous: @VictorianMaid99 “No grain means no food and no food means no people. Planned demolition just like 911.”

Sublime: @danlowe8684 “Those silos were not in ‘disrepair’. They were some of the beefiest structures ever built – and would have been standing for many more generations. They have been working to demolish them for over a year with modern machinery – and are far from done. The silo builders invented slip-form concrete construction in the early 1900s (Buffalo, NY, I believe), and it is used today for bridge and highway construction.”

Ridiculous: @e030396  “Another example of this generations’ toxic mentality (tear-down-functional-structures with out good reason). Looks like a stupid move not considering the increase carbon foot print.”

Sublime: @paulkurilecz4209 “More than likely the conveyor systems were in disrepair. They were not refurbished due to a lack of business.”

Meanwhile, CL Construction has been active elsewhere.

“In between all of this, our team has been down in Sunray, Tex. to dismantle another grain elevator facility,” the spokesman reports.

We know Tillotson built in Sunray and suspect that’s the facility in question.

Note: The white elevator at upper right is a Tillotson elevator from the mid-1950s.

Pages 2 and 2A of Tillotson Construction record, Minneapolis, Kan. to Polk, Nebr., 1947-1948

by baggyparagraphs

Pages 2 and 2A of the Tillotson Construction Co. record of concrete elevators cover jobs in 1947 and 1948. The pages start at Minneapolis, Kan. and extend to Polk, Nebr. The jobs range in size from a 31,360-bushel mill building at Minneapolis, Kan. (in addition to the 100,000-bushel elevator) in 1948 to a whopping 265,000-bushel elevator with 125-foot drawform walls in Dalhart, Tex. 

Page 1, which started the record in 1939, included cost information, but those figures aren’t included here. 

Locations represented in these records are Minneapolis, Kan.; ­­Dalhart, Tex.; Helena, Okla.; Eva, Okla.; Rushville, Nebr.; Satanta, Kan.; Gruver, Tex.; Moscow, Kan.; Manchester, Okla.; Springfield, Colo.; Rolla, Kan.; and Polk, Nebr. 

Be sure to look at the bottom of p. 2 for notes on adverse weather and other challenges that factored into these jobs. 

Query on leasing leads to explanation of farm credit system

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Tillotson Construction Co. was one of several organizations that welcomed Nixon Truck Grain Market at 27th and O Streets in a Dec. 1, 1938 Omaha Daily Journal-Stockman ad. “Let good construction and equipment increase your profits,” the Tillotson ad line advised.

Just 30 days later, another paper, The Daily Record, carried the brief notice of a leasing agreement between A.A. Nixon & Co. and Tillotson for machinery and equipment. Value of the lease was $1,808.24.

With questions on why a prosperous company like Nixon would lease, we tabbed Brad Perry, who’s a good friend of Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators, to explain. Brad has had a career in finance, which he described in an email:

With the Farm Credit meltdown of the mid 1980’s, the 12 District Banks for cooperatives merged with the central Bank for Cooperatives, headquartered in Denver. Then it was renamed CoBank.

More history: There were 12 Farm Credit Districts, roughly similar to the Federal Reserve Districts. Each District had a Federal Land Bank with local Land Bank Associations, a Federal Intermediate Credit Bank with Production Credit Associations, and a Bank for Coops (BC). The central bank handled the large loans that exceeded the District Banks for Coops’ lending limits.

All this changed after the farm crisis of the late 1980’s. There are now a total of six District Banks, including CoBank.  

I was at the Omaha BC from 1975 to 1987. In 1980, OBC started a consulting company to work with coops in our District, which was Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. At the depth of the farm crisis, I took the consulting company private. I’m still trying to fully retire, but have a couple clients I can’t say no to!

Q. Was it customary to lease machinery and equipment from the builder of an elevator?

A. I’m betting that the elevator’s owner didn’t have adequate funds to pay for everything, so the equipment was leased to him/her. That was not unusual. Why the equipment? It could be pulled out and re-sold.

Q. It looks like individual grain merchants like Nixon monopolized the market in grain distribution.

A. You’re about right on the grain merchants and monopolizing the grain business. The primary one was Cargill, along with the flour millers. Pillsbury, Washburn (Gold Medal), and so on. On the Northern Plains, there was also Peavey. Most of them were in cahoots with the railroads. There really wasn’t any government action that broke them up, but their predatory pricing. That gave rise to farmer-organized cooperatives and locally owned grain companies. The federal government did come in to the grain business in the early 1930s–the Great Depression. They created the Federal Grain Company to buy surplus stocks, i.e. wheat. Some of those elevators still stand and are still in use.

Q. It also looks like we’ll be on the road in a few weeks, and that could lead through southwestern Kansas, where Tillotson built elevators in a string of small towns.

A. On your Kansas trip, southern Kansas has some of the oldest concrete elevators in the country. All were built for wheat. As you know, there are mammoth elevators in Salina, Hutchinson, Topeka, and Wichita–particularly Haysville just South of Wichita. On or within 25 miles of U.S. 81/I-35 are four of the five largest elevators in the world. These are in Salina, Hutchinson, Haysville, and Enid, Okla. All were paid for by Commodity Credit Corporation storage payments.

Q. Besides the bountiful grain production, why are they concentrated there?

A. It was not unusual for wheat to be stored as long as 10 years. All wheat into the “terminals” came in 40-foot boxcars from area elevators. You’ll notice larger elevators the farther west you get. Notice Dodge City. It was too far away from the terminals, so they built more storage locally. You’ll see the same in Garden City, Ulysses, and other southwest Kansas towns.

Page 1 of Tillotson Construction record, Goltry, Okla. to Wellsburg, Iowa, 1939-1946

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Here at last we present a digitized page of the Tillotson Construction Co. record the late Tim Tillotson duplicated in 2012. Kristen Cart took the whole load of dupes to a copy center, and her effort leads to a batch of pages to be shared over the next few weeks. In that service, we’ve created a new subcategory of the blog for the records’ easy location.

Tillotson Construction Co. was formed in Omaha by Reginald and Joe Tillotson in 1938. Their first concrete elevator, listed on this page, was a 60,000-bushel job in Goltry, Okla. We visited that location in 2018.

Rose A. Tillotson was widow of Charles H. Tillotson and mother to Joe and Reginald.

The reader will note the company got off to a fast start until 1941 when World War Two intervened. There is a three-year gap until the next job in 1944. The page lists more from then until 1946. The jobs got much bigger–up to 350,000 bushels at Farnsworth, Tex. (Good luck squeezing “Farnsworth” into a narrow column heading!

Besides Goltry, we find details from Newkirk, Okla.; Douglas, Okla.; Medford, Okla.; Thomas, Okla.; Minatare, Nebr.; Sheldon, Iowa; Peterson, Iowa; Burlington, Okla.; Cherokee, Okla.; Lamont, Okla.; Blackwell, Okla.; Booker, Tex.; Follett, Tex.; Farnsworth, Tex.; Custer, Okla.; Elkhart, Kan.; Kingfisher, Okla.; Thomas, Okla. (another job); Ensign, Kan.; Pond Creek, Okla.; and Wellsburg, Iowa.

We visited some of these locations on our 2018 Texas-Oklahoma road trip.

Job sites are written atop the page with the year of construction. Most note which plan the elevator follows and extra information such as location of the driveway or diameters of the tanks. Zooming in splendidly reveals meticulously written entries. Uncle Tim told us the name of the employee who started this record. Maybe it’s in one of our early posts.

A key to reading this table: The left-hand column headed by “Item” lists various specifications such as gross capacity of the elevator and amount of rebar used per cubic yard of concrete in varying locations throughout the structure.

The middle section is devoted to costs (less commission) for labor and materials and even includes a line for state taxes. Only a few of Tillotson’s subsequent records include costs.

The bottom block has more info about total dollars and labor rates. At the very bottom, the notes are ad-libbed. They elaborate mundane points. One, for example, indicates total cost included a scale and office.

All in all, it’s a direct connection to answers on a great many points of Tillotson elevators.

Archival photo leads to guesses on the location of a mighty wooden elevator complex

by baggyparagraphs

The cache of archival photos recovered from the Tillotson homestead includes an image of a wooden elevator complex, but there are no inscriptions on back of the photo so we have no clue of the location or date.

Close inspection of the image reveals the smaller of the two elevator buildings is labeled. It appears that “Farmers Co-Op” was painted over other lettering, possibly “Grain & Coal.”

The larger building–how about that headhouse!–is labeled Farmers Co-Op Co.

We sure wish we could identify the woman standing on the office porch. She is buttoned up tight inside her overcoat and giving a nice smile.

The car looks like a mid-1930s Pontiac.

There are other markings. We see the numerals 2 and 8 at the extreme left but can’t explain them. Three signs hang on the outer walls of the office. The one the car is facing advertises Semi Solid Buttermilk, a brand of partially dehydrated buttermilk that was used as a livestock and poultry feed supplement.

Brand advertising claimed: “When Sows are fed Semi-Solid they have little or no trouble from ‘dreaded white scours’ among the pigs.”

Ad from The Nebraska Farmer, Feb. 2, 1929

Signs to either side of the woman are illegible, but the shingle under the gable is inscribed Fairbanks Scales.

All the signs would lend the elevator a stamp of authentication: a patron of this establishment could be assured of getting the most advanced and most accurate services.

In general, the whole complex projects a mighty aura, and it’s easy to suspect this was one of the leading operations in its region.

More than 100 years ago, Charles H. Tillotson posed with … his father?

by baggyparagraphs

The man on the left is probably Charles H. Tillotson, and it’s possible the older man on the right is his father, John Wheeler Tillotson. There’s no labeling anywhere on the photo to help us. The location would likely be somewhere in Iowa. What was the occasion? It could be that Charles was showing off a car on a visit home. We can’t put a finger on the car’s make. Ford Motor Co. dominated in those days, but it doesn’t seem to be a Ford. The refined two-door runabout body style became common across the automotive industry around 1915. Charles H. already had a family by then. This wasn’t a kid-friendly auto, but he may have been setting a standard for his son Reginald and his grandchildren to come. They were all car-crazy.