Category Archives: Charles H. Tillotson

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.

Incorporation notices provide a timeline and sketch the drama of Van Ness Construction Co.

by kocart

Story by Kristen Cart

We know a little bit about the R. M. Van Ness Construction Co. from newspaper articles prior to its incorporation. When the business began, Van Ness built elevators from its headquarters in Fairbury, Nebr. before moving to Omaha in 1916. They situated their Omaha headquarters on the ground floor of the Grain Exchange building.

The company structure was formalized in 1923, when the R. M. Van Ness Construction Co. incorporated as a grain elevator construction business. Officers were therein named, shareholding partners designated, and the valuation of shares determined.

We find these partners and board members appearing in subsequent articles about their business dealings, as we will illuminate in upcoming posts.

The company published an amendment to the articles of incorporation after the 1927 death of the founder, R. M. Van Ness, who fell victim to a brain hemorrhage at age 50.

Mary A. Van Ness assumed leadership and guided her construction business during some of its most productive years.

She held the reins during the tumultuous personal events of 1928, as well, when daughter Mary Van Ness Stribling and her husband Harold Stribling survived a home invasion and attack by an “ax-maniac” who had terrorized the Omaha-Council Bluffs area. A suspect named Jake Bird was tried and convicted of assault early the following year in Council Bluffs district court.

The local papers played up the story, culminating in the Omaha World-Herald’s Feb. 3, 1929 report of the guilty verdict.

“Well, it’s a tough break,” Bird said after the verdict was announced.

“Oh, I’m glad,” Mary Van Ness said before embracing her daughter.

“It’s the only way it could be,” Mary Van Ness Stribling said. “No other verdict would be honest or just. I never was in doubt about Bird being the man. Any other verdict would have affected me terribly, because it would have reflected on my honesty, and would make it appear that I had done an injustice. I have been through a terrible ordeal. It’s bad enough as it is.”

By 1931, according to newspaper accounts, Mary A. Van Ness had had enough, and we find this short newspaper item:

Charles H. Tillotson and John Conrey had taken the helm, and the company continued an extremely active period of grain elevator construction until Charles Tillotson’s death in 1938. It appears that Charles H. Tillotson, and later his son Reginald, were involved with this company throughout its existence.

The value of the stock was down from $25,000 to $5,000 during the height of the Great Depression.

We will explore the several phases of the company’s evolution in future posts.

Rich lode of archival material means Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators will grow

by baggyparagraphs

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. 

We need Carl Sagan to count all these blueprints.
Millet Ville, South Carolina

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. 

Charles H. Tillotson

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. 

The men and projects of Van Ness Construction Co. appeared in social notes of local newspapers

by kocart

Story by Kristen Cart

While searching old newspaper articles for early Van Ness Construction Co. work projects, I happened upon an interesting way to track them. Society pages in newspapers routinely mentioned visitors to a town and the movements of important citizens. The purposes of the visits were usually noted. In these pages, I found a treasure trove of elevator information in various Nebraska newspapers. A few examples follow, giving clues to the tempo of Van Ness Construction’s operations.

Anton Proskovec, of Lushton, Nebr., was a foreman for the Van Ness Construction Company of Omaha, and he worked on several jobs in 1934. The People’s Banner of David City, Nebr., among other papers, carefully cataloged his comings and goings that year.

Anton Proskovec of Lushton visited home folks, the J. B. Proskovec family on Sunday. He has been made a foreman of the Van Ness Construction Co., of Omaha. They are tearing down an elevator in Lushton.

The paper also cataloged Anton’s visits to Roscoe, Nebr., where the Van Ness company was installing a dust eliminator; Shelby, Nebr., where they built a new elevator; and Linwood, Nebr., where they tore one down. Five newspaper items from The People’s Banner detailed his movements in 1934. Further investigation revealed that his father, James B. Proskovec, owned property, conducted business, and was involved in local politics in Butler County, Nebr.

In two similar newspaper notices, we discovered that Virgil Johnson, the family patriarch of the elevator construction company Johnson & Sampson Construction Co., got his start as an employee of Van Ness Construction.

First, the Beatrice Daily Sun of Feb 20, 1934, mentioned that Virgil Johnson and Rupert Hammonds were boarding with Mrs. C. R. Rossel while ironing the Farmers’ Union elevator for Van Ness. But where was the job site?

Then, in the Beatrice Daily Sun of March 22, 1934, we found this gem:

Messrs. Rupert Hammons (sic) and Virgil Johnson of the Van Ness Construction company of Omaha finished ironing the Farmers’ Union elevator early last week and left Rockford.

Rockford is a tiny Gage County hamlet nine miles from Beatrice on U.S. Route 136.

Immediately preceding that note, we find:

Joe Tillotson of Omaha was a supper guest at the A. L. Burroughs home Tuesday night the 13th.

Joe, one of the sons of Charles H. Tillotson and brother to Reginald, could have been in town either working in the elevator trade or simply visiting the family. It is hard to guess. Joe, much later, founded the J. H. Tillotson Construction Co. of Denver, Colo. with William Osborn as superintendent.

The Colfax County Caller recorded the movements of Reginald Tilloston and his wife Margaret on Oct. 18, 1934, noting:

Mr. and Mrs. R. O. Tillatson (sic) of Omaha have taken light housekeeping rooms at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Divis. Mr. Tillatson (sic), who is employed by the Van Ness Construction Co., is helping wreck the Dawson elevator in Linwood.

An interesting connection was revealed when the Colfax County Caller of Nov. 22, 1934, mentioned that J. A. Divis returned from Shelby on Monday, where he had been employed by Van Ness for four weeks.

Three months earlier, an article located the Tillotson couple in Arapahoe, Nebr. According to The Public Mirror of July 26, 1934 …

Mr. and Mrs. Tillison (sic) have rented light housekeeping rooms at the Orval Millard residence. Mr. Tillison (sic) is employed with the Van Ness Construction Co. of Omaha and is working on the Farmers’ Elevator repair job.

The Tillotsons had a very full work calendar that year.

The Nemaha County Herald of Feb 14, 1935, said that C. H. Tillotson of the Van Ness Construction Co. of Omaha was a Brock visitor on Tuesday. Was it a sales call for elevator work in Brock, Nebr.? Or was it a social visit?

Other newspaper social pages gave us more Van Ness employees and their projects: Mr. Webb was in McNeill, Nebr. in 1935 doing elevator repair; Phillip Connell was in Rydal, Nebr. in 1935 for an automatic shipping scale installation; Guy Freeman of Fremont was in Fremont, Nebr. and in Kansas in 1935 doing work for Van Ness; Mr. Wise was foreman at Grafton, Nebr., doing elevator remodeling in 1938; and Mr. R. A. Spatz was foreman at Blue Hill, Nebr. and Keene, Kans. in 1938, performing elevator overhauls.

The previous items spanned the period after the Van Ness family left the business, and when Charles H. Tilloston was a partner. They show indirectly how prominent in the trade Van Ness Construction had become.

A much earlier mention from Marysville, Kan. in 1925 said Mr. Greenway was working on a new elevator there. This Mr. Greenway was among the board members when the company first incorporated. It was the lone mention of Van Ness in the society pages, before the 1930s, that I could find so far.

In an upcoming post, I will review some rather unusual incidents and life events that shed further light on Van Ness Construction.

Van Ness completes a 30,000-bushel elevator in Cedar Bluffs, Nebr. and the party is on

by baggyparagraphs

A lovely Monday in early May of 1934 proved perfect for festivities that attended dedication of the new Farmers Union elevator in Cedar Bluffs, Nebr. 

After deciding in January to tear down its 48-year-old elevator and rebuild, the Farmers Union Co-Operative Association awarded the job to Van Ness Construction Co., of Omaha. A new 30,000-bushel elevator soon rose on the same site as the demolished elevator in Cedar Bluffs, a progressive Saunders County village. Photos by Reginald Tillotson, who worked for Van Ness along with his father Charles H. Tillotson, show the job starting in early spring before the trees budded out.

A news report explains how the dedication attracted an “immense” crowd and sparked a festival-like atmosphere on that pleasant occasion. Events started at 12.00 noon with free ice cream, cake, and coffee for more than 600 registrants. 

“There was plenty to eat for everybody,” the New Cedar Bluffs Standard reported. 

After dinner, races and contests were held for boys and girls, providing entertainment for the crowd and fun for the youngsters. Cash prizes were given out. The Midland College band traveled from nearby Fremont to play for everybody.

Mayor J. P. Jessen took the platform, welcomed folks, and introduced lots of dignitaries. H.D. Black received special recognition as manager of the elevator, and Alex McAuley—a 17-year veteran of the company—was assistant manager. 

Next came the parade. A line of automobiles carried the officers and directors of the elevator association. A former employee of Farmers Union weighed in with the ceremonial first load of wheat to be received and stored away in the new house.

The entertainment continued as a quartet took the stage and sang old favorites. Following their numbers, a solo vocalist performed with piano accompaniment.

Other cash prizes were awarded, this time to L.A. Freeman, the association stockholder who had the largest family present. The jackpot for longest distance traveled went to Jim Broz, who made the journey from Prague, a town 16.5 miles away by road. 

Speechifying was courtesy of Newton Gaines, of the University of Nebraska Extension service, who “as usual did a mighty fine job of it. He is an interesting and entertaining speaker.” Gaines himself was Midland College graduate devoted to the gospel of better farming and spread it with humor and philosophy in thousands of speeches.

The Cedar Bluffs day of parties ended with a free, well-attended dance at the opera house, and the next day was back to normal with the new elevator in service. The dedication day was long-remembered by the people. Even now we take away the message of an elevator’s importance within its community. Sometimes in daily life, the people came and went without even noticing it, but in fact it was the thing that held the community together.

Farmers Union decides to demolish and rebuild in 1934 at Cedar Bluffs, Nebr.

by baggyparagraphs

It was January of 1934, still the depths of the Great Depression, but optimism led the stockholders of Farmers Union Co-Operative Association, of Cedar Bluffs, Nebr., to decide the time had come to tear down and replace their old elevator. 

Organized in 1888, Farmers Union claimed to be “the oldest cooperative elevator in the United States,” according to the New Cedar Bluffs Standard weekly newspaper. There were 200 stockholders with capital stock in the total of $50,000. 

Reginald Tillotson’s neat script on the back of his photo.

At the same annual meeting, the Association announced payout of stock dividends at eight percent and patronage dividends of one percent. The newspaper remarked that “considering the times [it’s] a mighty fine showing.” 

The old elevator was to be dismantled, with as much material as possible being salvaged for re-use. The new elevator would be steel-covered. The initial report stated capacity at 80,000 bushels, which is a lot for a cribbed wooden elevator. A subsequent report put it at 30,000 bushels—a more realistic figure. 

The photo above shows the weathered main house with its peaked headhouse, and a storage annex with the upper structure enclosing the run being labeled Farmers Union Co-Op Assn. The shed on the left bears a sign saying Ash Grove Portland Cement.

A selling point on the rebuild was the prospect of local help getting employment in the construction. 

Van Ness Construction won the job, as will be seen in a follow-up post. Tillotson Construction, which evolved from Van Ness, returned to Cedar Bluffs in 1950 to build a 130,000-bushel reinforced-concrete elevator, which we visited in 2020.

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.

Tillotson family’s 1930s Omaha home at 624 N. 41 St is revealed

by baggyparagraphs

By Charles J. Tillotson

“My oh my! The old house is still standing after all these years, which is at least 89 years.

“This is my Grandpa and Grandma’s (Charles H. and Rose A. Brennan Tillotson’s) home and where Dad and Mom (Reginald O. and Margaret I. Tillotson) lived intermittently for three years after they got married.

“I was born in 1935 in Creighton [University]’s St. Joseph Hospital and lived here for my first three years when Dad wasn’t on a construction site too far to come home. Dad built a small house-trailer so that he could take Mom and his kids along with him when going away. 

“When Dad finally decided to settle down three years later [after the death of Charles J. and formation of Tillotson Construction Co. with brother Joe], he bought a house with a fruit orchard located on the northern outskirts of Omaha. 

“I have a bunch of photos of the house while I was standing in front of it with my winter togs on, and of course it was painted white at that time.” 

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

by baggyparagraphs

001

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.
003
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.

Formation of Tillotson Construction Co. pinned down thanks to news clipping

by baggyparagraphs

By Ronald Ahrens

We knew Tillotson Construction Co. was formed in 1938 after the death of my great-grandfather, Charles F. Tillotson. Family records show that he died in June of 1938 in New CorpsConcordia, Kan.

Sons Joseph H. Tillotson and Reginald O. Tillotson decided the future lay in reinforced-concrete elevators.

While they may have continued construction and repair of wooden elevators, the company’s construction record shows the first concrete elevator went up at Goltry, Okla., in 1939.

A notice of “New Corporations” in the Sep. 9, 1938 edition of the Lincoln Journal Star announces:

“Tillotson Construction company (sic), Omaha. The construction, erection, repair, reconstruction and rebuilding of grain elevators, storage warehouses and buildings of similar nature and description, $5,000. Joseph H. Tillotson, Reginald O. Tillotson, Rose A. Tillotson.”

Born in the late 1880s as Rose Brennan, Rose A. Tillotson, was the surviving widow of Charles and mother of Reginald and Joe. She died in the 1950s. 

These details help us to construct a timetable while also showing the Tillotson brothers took bold steps to embrace new techniques and processes, moving the family enterprise forward.

Thank you to blog follower Suzassippi for passing along this clipping.