By Ronald Ahrens

Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators is thrilled to report wonderful news. A benefactor has sent us 36 pounds of records salvaged from the Tillotson homestead north of Omaha. The carton includes five-dozen 8×10 black-and-white photos, most of them nice aerial shots, and many from locations that are new to us. Really? We built a warehouse for Peet’s Feeds in Council Bluffs? Along with all this, there are dozens of rolls of blueprints. It’s enough to keep us at the grindstone for a long time. 

As our more than 300 subscribers know, the Tillotson brothers—Reginald and Joe—founded Tillotson Construction Co. after the 1938 death of their father, Charles H. Tillotson. Reginald and Charles H. had spent years building wooden elevators for Van Ness Construction Co., but upon the death of Charles H., the sons launched their new company. They intended to use reinforced concrete and put up larger elevators.

Reginald and Joe split up in the late-1940s. Joe moved from Omaha to Denver and set up his own operation, but he died in a car accident not long afterwards. Tillotson Construction Co. flourished through the 1950s, building elevators from North Dakota to South Carolina. It also spawned offshoots such as Mayer-Osborn Construction Co., in which Kristen’s grandfather, William Osborn, was a partner. 

Kristen Cart and I launched Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators in November of 2011. When our careers would permit, we blogged away and have created more than 500 posts. This has resulted in a small but steady audience. The last three weeks have brought 1,005 pages views, which we think is pretty good. They come from all over the world. We weren’t posting very often in the last few years because we ran out of material. For us, it’s either site visits or archival records that lead to posts. Site visits are tough because I live near Palm Springs–not a single elevator!–and Kristen might not want me to say where but there are cowboys and elk and petroleum.

Things have changed as my Uncle Mike no longer lives in the Tillotson home, which Reginald built of reinforced concrete in 1952. Sorry to say, the home had become what authorities described as a “hoarder’s nightmare.” Pleased to say, the folks who purchased it in 2025 were diligent about salvaging the good stuff. Their shipment also includes my grandmother Margaret McDunn Tillotson’s copy of the Wayne Spizzerinktum yearbook from her Wayne State College Class of 1925. There is a St. Pius X Daily Missal, which is a puzzle because the Tillotsons went to St. Philip Neri; it was my family that went to St. Pius X but I don’t know anything about that book. And here’s Uncle Tim’s Fifth Armored “Victory” Division basic training almanac from his army service in Camp Chaffee, Ark. Inside it, inexplicably, I found a snapshot print of three nuns wearing all-white, and there’s a five-story parking garage in the background.

I called up the librarian at Wayne State, who says he’ll take the yearbook. The army almanac is another question. It has an elaborate, stamped leather cover but the volume sustained water damage. The missal is falling apart. Maybe I will return it to St. Pius X and hope it makes up for my poor performance as a student. 

All this is a roundabout way of saying Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators is about to experience a growth spurt, although we’ll see if it’s akin to the growth spurt from wooden elevators that held 20,000 bushels to concrete ones that held 120,000 bushels. Timing is great because our careers are not the hindrance they used to be, so we will be able to work on new posts.

It’s great to have all this source material, but things are pretty lopsided in favor of Tillotson Construcdtion Co. We would love to get our hands on an equivalent archive from Mayer-Osborn and from J.H. Tillotson, Contractor. 

We invite first-time and casual readers to join with our subscribers and receive email notifications of new posts. All should watch this space for a renewed effort in telling the grain elevator story at the most basic level. It’s turned out a richer topic than we ever figured, and now comes this opportunity to groove on it and grow the blog.