Category Archives: Van Ness Construction

Jobs at Geneva and Exeter, Nebr., shed light on elevator activities and a crime spree

by baggyparagraphs

Our collection of Reginald Tillotson’s early 1930s photos includes two “before” and two “after” snapshots with notes that say “Farmers Terminal Elevator, Geneva, Nebr., Repair and Ironing Job 1932.” Without photographic support, an additional note records that in the following year Van Ness Construction Co., of Omaha—which employed Reginald and his father Joseph—“Tore down two old, rebuilt one new” in the nearby Fillmore County town of Exeter. 

A search of articles in the Nebraska Signal newspaper, of Geneva, turns up little additional information about either job. One item suggests the elevator had been closed during the spring. Further elaboration is awaited. 

We did learn that by January of 1932, a pair of burglars, Louis Shallenberg and Clifford Crowder, had been arrested in Grand Island and “confessed to robbing the farmers’ elevator at Exeter and taking a radio and other articles valued at $50. They are also implicated in numerous other robberies in this and nearby counties. Shallenberg was released from the pen last summer after completing a term for robbery and Crowder recently served a jail sentence at Wilber.”

Farmers Elevator, Geneva, Nebr., 1932 “After” photos. The “Before” photos are seen at top.

In lieu of information about elevator “repair and ironing,” we present the following items from the Nebraska Signal that describe 1932 activities in Geneva. 

The annual business meeting of the Farmers elevator was held Tuesday afternoon at the I.O.O.F. temple. The meeting was called to order by the president, Henry Jensen. At the election of officers Fred Underwood was re-elected secretary and Henry Kolar and William Morgan were re-elected directors. The report showed that the company had a good business year and a ten per cent dividend was declared on shares, eight percent on gas and one-half cent on grain. About $90 of undivided profit was given to the American Legion fund. Due to the blocked condition of the roads only about forty were present. Nebraska Signal, Jan 14, 1932 

The Farmers Elevator of Geneva will open Saturday, April 30, and thereafter on Friday and Saturday each week until further notice. We will have a full line of farm seeds. Will exchange some for some good seed corn. Come and see our new machinery at used machinery prices. Sheridan Grain & Machinery Co. Nebraska Signal, Apr. 28, 1932 

Orange cane, Honeydrip and black, 50 cents per bushel. Fridays and Saturdays every week at Farmers elevator, Geneva, Neb. We buy grain Fridays and Saturdays only. Wm. Sheridan. Nebraska Signal, May 26, 1932

The Farmers Elevator will be open every day after July 1. Phone 98. Nebraska Signal, June 30, 1932

We will pay a premium for mixed wheat and oats. Also have Grim alfalfa seed at $6.50 per bushel. Farmers Elevator. Nebraska Signal Aug. 11, 1932 

The Farmers Elevator Co. at Geneva will have No. 66 Turkey Red seed wheat free from rye will exchange for other wheat reasonable. 48-1. Nebraska Signal, Aug. 24, 1932 

Van Ness and the Tillotsons step in and rebuild after fire takes out a country elevator

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

It was an uneventful run through the night until the track led Burlington No. 22 to the flyspeck town of Corning in northwest Missouri. Corning wasn’t even normally a whistlestop but now, at 2.30 a.m., the locomotive’s crew released a blast to alert the sleeping Holt County community that their Farmers Grain Co. elevator was burning. 

A hell of a blaze was going by the time the fire crew arrived on scene, and they couldn’t stop the destruction. The coup de grâce occurred when the roof fell in, and by dawn on that Saturday, April 29, 1933, the elevator had collapsed and was a smoldering ruin. Authorities indicated the fire had started under the cob bin. The elevator and its contents were insured for $8,000. 

It would become a case of Van Ness Construction, from 95 miles away in Omaha, to the rescue. 

Oddly enough, on the very day before, a newspaper called The Holt County Democrat and The Craig Leader had run a substantial profile of the Farmers Grain Co. as part of a feature titled “Who’s Who in Neighboring Towns.” 

Under the management of J.D. Ahrens (no relation to the present blogger), the “well known firm” was successful for years. 

“They are a reliable firm that gives correct weights, top prices and superior service,” the profile declared. “They demand a specific standard and maintain this standard to their customers.” 

The elevator was “practically indispensable to the farming community surrounding Corning” and had even “won a place in the hearts of the farmers through their excellent service and treatment.” 

Obviously, quick replacement of the elevator would be a priority. Van Ness, which employed my great-grandfather Charles H. Tillotson and grandfather Reginald O. Tillotson, who was in his mid-twenties, came onto the scene.  

So sure of a good outcome were the principals of Farmers Grain that, on June 23, The Holt County Democrat reported one V.A. Solleder had bought a Chevrolet truck for use at the elevator. 

“Heretofore the elevator has been handicapped because of the inability to make delivery of coal, cobs and grain, also in hauling from the Farmers, their grain,” the news item said.

“The truck will be an important asset to the business.” 

Meanwhile, the Omaha crew toiled on with help from some local men who joined in. 

Only a few finishing touches remained to be completed when Farmers Elevator placed a July 14 ad in the Leader informing “all our old patrons and … friends in the Corning and Craig communities … we are ready to receive your grain.”  

Van Ness performed its part with unprecedented skill and speed. 

“It was exactly forty-eight days from the time the contractor began the work on the new building until it was ready for use,” a July 23 article reported. Farmer James Mavity arrived with the first load of wheat. 

The new elevator that was bigger than the old by some 5,000 bushels, giving a total capacity of 18,000 bushels, and work was completed at the tidy price of $7,000, which ensured the cooperative’s solvency. 

Near the end of that job, Reginald snapped the photo we see with this post, providing enduring evidence of the Tillotsons’ handiwork.  

Lone carpenter braves scaffolding, brings new elevator to completion at Shelby, Nebr. in 1934

by baggyparagraphs

A lone worker adds finishing touches to an elevator in this photo dated Oct. 4, 1934 and inscribed “Shelby, Nebraska.” Shelby is today a town of 600 in Polk County, south of Columbus. The man balances on rudimentary scaffolding at the top of the structure, which we estimate to be about 55 feet high. A Ford coupe is parked on the ground below.

It is unknown whether this elevator was an all-new facility or the replacement for a damaged one. The nearest we can come to answering the question is a brief report in the Polk County News of the previous year.

“The Shelby elevators assumed a business activity on Monday (July 10, 1933) that reminded one of former days of prosperity, as we are informed that 213 loads of corn were delivered to the elevators that day, and the price paid was 47c per bushel.

“To show the difference in the price of farm products now and a little over four months ago, we reprint the markets as printed in the Sun on March 2, in comparison with the markets of today. We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions as to the cause of this improvement in the grain market. There’s a reason.”

Please see the news clip for price tables. Our interest is drawn to the phrase “Shelby elevators.” It’s impossible to say how many there were, or to account for this new elevator presumably built by Van Ness Construction, of Omaha, with Tillotson involvement.

We welcome comments from readers on wooden elevator construction methods. Another news item that came up in our search said a 20,000-bushel elevator in another Nebraska town was estimated to cost $7,000.

It would also be interesting to hear what “reason” the Polk editor had in mind about price improvements.

First look at archive of 1930s photos shows back-to-business after wooden elevator repair in North Dakota

by baggyparagraphs

The Tillotson homestead north of Omaha was sold in 2025, and as a consequence Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators has received a few leaves from a photo album with snapshots of 1930s jobs. Together, these pictures comprise the earliest documentation we’ve ever seen of Van Ness Construction and Tillotson activities. 

After the sudden passing of Charles H. Tillotson in 1938, his sons Reginald and Joseph built Tillotson Construction Company’s first concrete elevator, located in Goltry, Oklahoma. Prior to that, they worked for Ralston Van Ness out of Omaha. The photos we received appear to show jobs done for that company earlier in the 1930s. 

Most of the photos are inscribed on the back with a name, location, and date. 

The above photo depicts a 1933 scene at a twin-elevator complex in Norma, North Dakota. Norma is a dot on the map in Renville County northwest of Minot and twenty or so miles south of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. A note on the album page says “Rebuilt Fire Loss 1933.” 

Searching through a newspaper archive turns up no more details, so we can only look at the image and suppose the relief felt by local farmers who had limited options for grain disposition. Especially at a country location like this, a damaged elevator was an unhappy circumstance that would have required hauling grain over an extended distance. 

On a sunny day at Norma, a few motor vehicles converge at the complex with at least four horse-drawn farm wagons. It’s illuminating to see wagons still in use at that time. Their limitations surely gave farmers a sense of urgency about acquiring a motor truck.

An old pickup with wooden artillery-style wheels in the right foreground was likely a Ford. It has an emblem on the driver’s door, but we can’t determine anything more about it. 

Under close examination of the photo, the elevator tower in the distance appears to be labeled “Minnekota.” The sign on the near tower can’t be read at all. 

A number of men are going about their business, whether they’re still seated on wagon perches, standing inside a wagon, or on the ground. In the mix of trucks and cars, note the silhouette of an automobile way down the sidetrack.

Several boxcars await service. Norma is on a secondary road leading south from North Dakota Route 5, and it seems likely the rail line was a spur. This could have been part of Soo Line operations. 

We lack additional information about the event that led to the reconstruction. Newspaper pages often had stories of grain elevator fires in 1932 and 1933, with casualties in Chicago at a 200,000-bushel elevator on the river there, and with lesser tolls at smaller elevators in prairie locations. 

The Bismark Tribume reported on Aug. 24, 1933 that a 20,000-bushel Minnekota Grain Co. elevator had burned at Butte, North Dakota, to the southeast of Minot. It also claimed a 14,000-bushel carload of wheat. Butte was left with three elevators after the disaster.

We invite our readers to stay with us as we post the rest of the thirty photos in the newly obtained archive.

How a Tillotson family member escaped the Omaha ax murderer’s attack in 1928

by baggyparagraphs

By Charles J. Tillotson

Another tidbit of info on the Tillotson family I wanted to mention was about the attack in November of 1928 by the ax murderer otherwise known as the Chopper.

picture4

Mom used to tell the story of how Grandpa’s sister Mary Alice‘s daughter, Mary, and her husband, Harold “Guy” Stribling, were attacked by the Chopper in the middle of the night in their home near Carter Lake.

Harold was beaten severely about the head with a blunt instrument thought to be an ax, an Mary was also struck by the intruder with the same instrument.

Harold suffered a huge head depression and other lacerations, and Mary was beaten and cut up–but both of them survived.

Mary begged the intruder to save her baby girl, Minerva and somehow talked him into leaving the house.

The intruder, later on named as Jake Bird, agreed to let them all live if Mary would walk with him. It is said that after about three miles of walking, Jake let Mary go.

Jake Bird was accused and convicted of other Chopper murders in and around Omaha.

Both Harold and Mary eventually recovered, but Mom used to say that Guy was never the same.

She knew how to scare us with stories like this. I’m sure it was as a means of making us realize that danger lurks everywhere. She was so right!

Note: Thanks to blogger Brianna Wright for delving into the archives of the Omaha World-Herald to revive this story.

Uncle Chuck affixes a generator to his memory, and Van Ness Construction comes alive

by baggyparagraphs

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Great-grandma Margaret’s general store, Shields, Kan., 1910. Margaret A. Tillotson was Grandpa Charles’s mother. I don’t know why Mother (Margaret Irene) thought it was my Great Aunt Mary’s store. Maggie was a nickname for Margaret, and my Dad would call Mom “Maggie” every once in a while to tease her because he knew she didn’t like it.

By Charles J. Tillotson

I forgot to add in my comments [on company origins] what little I know about Grandpa Charles’s experience with Van Ness Construction.
I’m really stretching the memory, and I have to start with Grandpa Charles’s father:
Charles H. Tillotson was the son of John Wheeler and Margaret A. (Jackson) Tillotson.
John and Margaret to my knowledge had at least six children: Raymond, Charles (grandpa), Bertha, Mary Alice (known as Lovie), Walter, and May.
  1. Raymond took over the homestead.
  2. Charles worked as a carpenter.
  3. Bertha married a telegraph operator.
  4. Mary Alice (Lovie) married Ralston Van Ness, elevator builder.
  5. Walter worked as a landscaper.
  6. May married Zomer Dryden and lived on a farm in Ohio.
My mother used to call Mary Alice, Aunt Lovie, so that is how I remember her. Aunt Lovie married Ralston Van Ness (he was 26 years old) in 1902 in Shields, Kan., where he operated his wooden grain elevator construction business. However, within a year’s time, they had relocated to Omaha where their daughter Mary was born. The couple also had twin daughters who died at birth in 1906 and a son, Ralston, who also died at birth in 1908.
By 1930, Ralston and Mary had built up quite a reputation for the construction of wooden grain elevators, and it was about then that Grandpa Charles went to work for them. I know for sure that Dad also went to work for Ralston as a laborer. (I don’t know about Uncle Joe). I have no exact date for when Ralston passed away, but I think it was around 1935 when I was born. Around 1935 Ralston died and left Aunt Lovie with the business.
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Very interesting that, on my birth certificate from 1935, Dad is listed as a laborer employed by Van Ness Construction, and he had been employed in this work for a period of three years. Dad was listed as 26 years of age and Mom at 31. Place of residence for them (and me) is listed as 624 N. 41 St., Omaha, Neb. That is where Grandpa Charles and Grandma Rose lived and where Dad and Mom bunked up when they were not on a construction job using Dad’s trailer as home.
From what I can determine, Aunt Lovie wanted to continue in the building business, but she wanted to build homes for the growing Omaha community. So Grandpa and Dad gradually finished up the Van Ness contracts and in 1938 decided to form their own company.
Aunt Lovie eventually moved out to California where she built homes in Mill Valley and San Rafael. Although Mom and Dad fell out of contact with her, after my discharge from the Army, in 1957, I  managed to track her down and had a nice visit over the phone. She was in her early 70s by then and wanted to retire. Her daughter, Mary, stayed in Omaha, married Guy Stribling, and they had three children, the youngest was born in 1940. I don’t know if the offspring are still living.
Van Ness Construction Co. built wood grain elevators. Their field of influence was centered in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and a portion of Texas.

An old letter reveals some details about the Tillotsons’ early days in wooden elevators

by baggyparagraphs

Charles H. Tillotson

By Ronald Ahrens

A letter from my grandmother Margaret Irene McDunn Tillotson reveals some details about the early nomadic life of my grandfather Reginald Oscar Tillotson. As we have documented in this blog, Charles H. Tillotson (seen in the photo above), who was Reginald’s father, built wooden elevators.

When Charles H. died in 1938, Reginald and his brother Joe took the helm of the family’s construction company and learned how to build elevators by slip-forming concrete. That positioned Tillotson Construction Company to advance as the new method served to meet demand for greater storage capacity at rural cooperatives.

My grandmother’s missive of Oct. 6, 1978 gives a few details of those early days.

Charles_Tillotson_Obit__The_Nebraska_State_Journal__Lincoln__Nebr___19_June_1938“When they moved from place to place with the construction company they had many funny places for a home. Your grandfather moved ten times one school term. They built cribbed elevators during those days. This was made by placing a two by four on a two by four to build the walls for the outside and to make the bins. The fields of corn and grain were used by the farmers so they had no great need for storage or grain elevators. So many jobs were to add on to bins or repair them. This made small jobs and many changes in places to live.

“One time they lived in a school house. Many times when it was a small job they lived in the elevator office. During the cold weather they got to live in parts of others’ homes and tried not to have to move. Construction those days was almost nil during the cold weather. They wished many times they were farmers when they had big snow storms.

“After his grade school days they settled in Omaha. Reginald worked in stores. His recreation was sports which I mention (tennis, baseball, football).”

Charles H. Tillotson straddled the divide between wood and concrete

by baggyparagraphs

Charles H. Tillotson

By Ronald Ahrens

My Great-grandfather Charles H. Tillotson may have been following his trade by instinct, but he opened the way for descendants to distinguish themselves in the business of elevator construction.

I know the Tillotsons saw themselves primarily as carpenters. My Uncle Charles J. Tillotson went to work as an apprentice carpenter for Tillotson Construction, which was founded after the death of his grandfather Charles. My Uncle Michael Tillotson learned carpentry on through the family business and worked as a carpenter throughout his career. When I helped him finish concrete sidewalks on a couple of side jobs in the 1970s, he preached a gospel that carpenters could do it all, whether it be concrete or painting. And in elevator construction, it was true.

Charles H. Tillotson was born in Brunswick, Mo., in 1880. He married Rose Brennan in Riverside, Iowa.

He and my Great-grandmother Rose had an apparently cozy life in Omaha with their three grown children, Joseph, Reginald, and Mary, all of whom became involved in elevator construction. Kristen Cart’s research has found the Tillotsons listed in the 1930 census. They lived at 624 N. 41st.

A 1936 city directory listed Charles H. as president of Van Ness Construction, a company that built mills and elevators. Joseph served as secretary-treasurer and Reginald was a foreman. Mary worked as a clerk-typist at the Federal Land Bank.

Charles_Tillotson_Obit__The_Nebraska_State_Journal__Lincoln__Nebr___19_June_1938

By then, Reginald was married to my grandmother, Margaret Irene McDunn Tillotson. Their firstborn Charles J., had arrived in 1935, followed the next year by my mother, Mary Catherine.

Uncle Tim Tillotson, the middle of their three sons between Charles J. and Michael (who was born in a home-built house trailer at a Smith Center, Kan., job site), says a story exchanged among the uncles was that Great-grandfather Charles H. would tell Reginald, “Put out that cigarette,” when they were working on jobs. The danger of fire was constant. How ironic, then, that Charles H. held a cigarette for his portrait.

After the death of paterfamilias Charles H., the Tillotson Construction Company was formed by Reginald, Joseph, and Mary. We would love to learn more about how this proceeded.

Meanwhile, the transition to slip-formed concrete construction was under way, with the Tillotsons’ carpentry skills being readily applied to the formwork.

A search for Van Ness elevator images yields surprising results

by kocart

Story by Kristen Cart

When hunting for ancient elevators–and by ancient, I mean hundred-year-old, steel-sheathed, wooden construction–you run into a serious problem: most of them no longer exist.

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A 1936 Omaha directory

The elevator you are looking for may have burned down years ago, followed by a replacement that also burned down. The things liked to catch fire, as a search of old newspapers will show.

Concrete construction was meant to reduce the problem, but the new elevators would burn in spectacular fashion when grain dust ignited, throwing debris and victims sky high.

The fertile ground for old elevator hunting remains the Internet, thanks to bloggers, satellite imagery, photographers, and the odd stuff that accumulates online.

Recently, we turned up some truly fascinating finds. We had discovered Charles H. Tillotson was president of Van Ness Construction Company, of Omaha, in the 1930s. He was the original founder of the construction business (and its progeny) that his children and their associates operated into the 1950s, as documented in this blog.

Charles H. Tillotson

Charles H. Tillotson

Now that we had a company name for his earlier efforts, the hunt for Van Ness elevators was on.

Rydal, Kan., was home to an early Van Ness elevator. The town was profiled in the blog Dead Towns of Kansas, a project by the Hutchinson, Kan., journalist Amy Bickel. On her page is a marvelous 1950s vintage aerial photograph of bridge construction showing two 1888- to 1907-vintage elevators, one of which was built by Van Ness. One of the two pictured elevators burned in 1952. We do not know if the fire consumed them both.

Luckily, a Van Ness mill and elevator in Grenola, Kan., was deemed historical, and the Kansas State Historical Society successfully nominated it for the National Register of Historic Places. Since grain was no longer stored there, the greatest threat to its survival was gone.

It is the only example we have found that still stands.

The architect of this elevator, designed and built in 1909, was P. H. Pelkey Company, with the construction completed by the R. M. Van Ness Construction, of Fairbury, Neb.

This company could have been the predecessor to the Van Ness Construction Company that Charles H. Tillotson led, and it may have been his earlier employer. A little more research could tease out the history of the Van Ness building enterprises in Nebraska.

But the elevator is representative of the typical construction of the time, when Charles would have been working in the business.

This old elevator is located in Grenola, Elk County, Kan., on a railroad siding which was formerly on a mainline of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, Southern Kansas Division.

A mystery is solved with the discovery of elevator builder Van Ness Construction

by kocart

The wooden elevator at Wymore, Nebraska, is representative of the style of Van Ness Construction

The wooden elevator at Wymore, Neb., is representative of the style of Van Ness Construction.

Story and photo by Kristen Cart

When we began investigating the elevators our grandfathers built, we had no idea how far the project would take us or what surprises would unfold. With the discovery of Van Ness Construction Company of Omaha, we have learned about the beginnings of the Tillotson family enterprise, and have entered a new phase of our search.

Charles_Tillotson_Obit__The_Nebraska_State_Journal__Lincoln__Nebr___19_June_1938

The Nebraska State Journal, June 19, 1938

We knew that Charles H. Tillotson, patriarch of the family and great-grandfather of Ronald Ahrens, built elevators before the days of slip-formed concrete. We found only one Tillotson elevator, made of wood, that predated the elegant concrete structures that sprang up all over the Midwest in the ’40s and ’50s–at least we found its obituary in a news video of its fiery demise. That 1940 vintage elevator, in Hawarden, Iowa, was built two years after Charles died. It burned down in 2006. We didn’t find, at the time, a project that we could attribute to Charles.

Then we had a breakthrough, thanks to Ancestry.com.

Ancestry has a wonderful collection of city directories. I had seen listings for the Tillotson family in Omaha before, but I missed a significant data point. While searching for Sylvia (Mayer) Tillotson, the wife of Joe and sister of Eugene Mayer, I discovered an Omaha directory for 1936 in which Charles H. Tillotson was listed as president of Van Ness Construction Company. Further Internet searches revealed some of the sites where Van Ness built its small steel-cased wooden elevators, but as yet we have found none that have survived.

Now we hope to find an existing elevator from the days before Joe and Reginald Tillotson dreamed up their slip-formed concrete designs. So far the closest we have come is an elevator that perished in a fire in Scribner, Neb., in 1971 , a nightmare that repeated itself in June, 2013.

Also, in a Google satellite image of the town of Diller, Neb., another identified site, a square concrete pad with a grain spout lying alongside it is located near new steel bins, right where an old elevator should have been. In Rydal, Kan., you can see a concrete pad with concrete pits near a horizontal storage building, with the remains of a rail siding alongside. I was a little surprised to find evidence of earlier elevators at these sites, but of course digging up tons of concrete for no special reason would be unnecessarily expensive, so there are remains.

Everywhere we looked for these ancient elevators, we found evidence of obsolescence and ultimate destruction, with little left to identify the sites. Newspapers were the only way to find the locations. Fire certainly destroyed some of them. For those that remained, the adoption of concrete and much larger storage facilities turned these old Van Ness elevators into relics and ultimately spelled their doom.