Logan Mills Community

                           The Hooper Sentinel
                             Hooper, Nebraska
                             October 2, 1930
                Historical Sketch of Logan Mills Community

        The following is historical sketch of Logan Mills as read
by R. L. Briggs at the dedication of the Logan Monument last
Thursday afternoon, followed by a short sketch by Mrs. Jos. Stecher of
the Schwab-Wagner early days trip to Nebraska.
        The first location of this place was in Washington County
but the question of bridges over the Elkhorn was a contention
between Washington and Dodge Counties, so that a three mile strip was
assigned to Dodge County.
        Harvey J. Robinson and Dennis Dean built a dam on Logan
Creek and put in a saw mill in the year 1859.  Then commenced the
erection  of a grist mill.  The foundation timbers were hewn burr oak as
were  flume timbers.  Frame and siding was sawn from cottonwood, roof
covered with oak shake shingles.
        The two water wheels were homemade "Tub Wheels", a tube
10 or 11 feet long and 4 feet in diameter standing upright in the
flume, raised by levers, letting the water onto the paddles at the
bottom of the tube.  The maindrive belt was made from un-tanned
cowhides, cut to widths and riveted together.
        Logan Mills was, I believe, the first water mill on the
north side of the Platte river.  There was a steam mill located at
old Ft. Calhoun, and that, I believe, was the first steam mill north
of the Platte.
        All finishing lumbers was of cottonwood and conveyors of
red cedar.  The capacity of production was limited to one pair of 36
inch imported mill burrs.
        The spring of 1861, A. C. Briggs bought out Mr. Robinson's
interest, and Mr. Robinson moved to Pebble Creek and commenced
the erection of Pebble Mills, after completion, owned by J. B.
Robinson.
        In the fall of 1862, J. F. Briggs bought Mr. Dean's
interest and the Logan Mills was conducted under the partnership of A.
C. and J. F. Briggs until 1882.
        In 1886 two turbine water wheels were installed and an
additional pair of 42 inch burrs, more than doubling the
capacity of the output.  This machinery was hauled from Council Bluffs,
Iowa, the Northwestern R. R. having been completed to that point.
        In the 60's there were no coopers or cooperage material in
Nebraska, flour needed containers, the first sacks were made
by hand from unbleached muslin and branded with a stencil and pot of red
ocher and water.
        On one of my grandfather's trips to Omaha he found and
bought a chain stitch sewing machine with a crank handle on the fly
wheel.
   Flour sacks were turned out with speed thereafter:
                                   1862
        Logan Post Office was an established act, A. C. Briggs
Postmaster.  Mail service by saddle when the streams were fordable,
Omaha, Papillion, Elk City, Fontanelle, Logan and West Point
were on this route and served weekly.
        In 1866 a bridge was built across Logan Creek of mortise
and tenon frame from hewn timbers, right where the present modern
bridge is located.
        Buckboard mail service increased to tri-weekly, Mr.
Hancock of Fontanelle, carrier.
        A general store was established at Logan by A. C. and J. F.
Briggs and was continued for 10 or 12 years.  Supplies were
hauled by wagon from Omaha until after the U.P.R.R. was completed
through Fremont in 1867.
        Surplus butter and eggs were packed in barrels with a bran
filler to avoid breakage in hauling.  The egg case of today not having 
been born. 
        Trading with the Omaha and Winnebago Indians was of
considerable extent, they passing twice each year, spring and
fall, in quest of buffalo in southwestern Nebraska and Kansas.  Furs
were not as fashionable as they are today.  Rat skins were bought
at 3 to 10 cents each, Kits 3 cents and prime furred, 10 cents. 
Beaver 1 to 3 dollars and otter 2 to 4 dollars, buffalo 5 to 10 dollars,
Indian tanned.  These prices were in trade for flour, calicos, sugar,
salt, buttons, beads, powder, lead and "nin-ne-heba", plug tobacco. 
This was cut fine for each smoke, mixed with "Killickanic", and inner
bark of the red willow.
        If you cared to insult an Indian, just offer him a smoke
from a sack or prepared smoking tobacco.  I never saw one accept the
offer.
        Although furs were cheap, my father hauled and sold one
load in Omaha, for fifteen hundred dollars.
        My first possession of horse flesh was an Indian colt
that my father swapped 100 pounds of flour for, even up.
                                1860-1870
        The barter with these Indians was of great benefit to the
early settlers.  They made a quantity of moccasins, both fancy and
plain, beaded and decorated in fast colors, and quills buckskin and
buffalo.
        The buffalo with fur turned in made an unusually warm
winter covering.  I do not know when the first overshoe was invented,
but my first recollection of an overshoe was an Indian made buffalo
overshoe.
        The nearest Logan ever came to being a town was along in
67 or 68.  A census should have been taken then, as there were near
five hundred Indians camped there for a couple of days.
                                   1867
        A blacksmith shop was built by the Briggs' and first
occupied by Mr. Roberts followed by Mr. Kreader then by Mr. Benson.
        A comfortable 12 room residence was built, brick hauled
from DeSota, below Blair, cottonwood lumber from the Missouri river,
siding, flooring and hardware from Omaha, fifty miles.  The same
year a combined store building and residence was erected.  The
first well dug and bricked up, and still in use today.
        Previous to this, running water was furnished by a spring
thirty rods from the house and on the opposite side of the
creek.
        This house, a landmark at that time in history, was an open
house to all the pioneers of the Logan and Elkhorn valley
settlers, as well as all the patrons of the Logan Mills.  A social center,
hardly a week passed but a gathering of some kind was carried
on.
        The first mansion of the Briggs' family at Logan was a
cottonwood leanto, with a dugout underground, three rooms under
ground.  Two rooms and a ladder attic above ground.  This was
residence, store and Post Office.
                                   1869
        In January 1869 J. F. Briggs received the appointment of
Postmaster by Alexander W. Randall, Postmaster General.
        The patronage of Logan Mills was ever on the increase, as
more settlers came, and the territory of patronage extended to
Norfolk on the Elkhorn, to Grand Island on the Platte and to Lyons and
Wayne on the Logan.  There were times when these patrons, many coming
with ox teams, were compelled to wait from a day to a week to get
their turn with grist. 
                                      1870
        The rail ends of the Sioux City and Pacific were about
one mile north of Nickerson.  This year the Briggs' commenced the
erection of a new mill and dam at the old site, again doubling the
capacity of power and output, with modern machinery.
        In the construction of the new saw mill at this time,
many of the neighbors found employment here.  Walking to and fro
morning and evening from 1 1/2 to 5 miles, among these I recall Henry
Hahlbeck, Carl Kriebel, William Hartung, B. J. Sampson, Nels Martinson,
John Realph, Jas Murphy and many others. Of these Mr. Martinson is
the only man surviving.
        My presence here today, I owe to Mr. Hahlbeck.  The saw
mill located north of the grist mill.  When about fours years of
age, I was helping at the saw mills setting stakes in the pond
morning and evening to note the rise and fall of the water.
        One morning I reached over to pull a stake but the stake
pulled  me and Mr. Hahlbeck saved me from going through the flume and
into the water wheels. 
                                Church Services
        Services was held in the building of the first school
sometimes in the mill and afterwards in the log school house.  The Rev.
Joel Warner and Rev. Jacob Ardiance were circuit riders for all
northeastern Nebraska.  The Rev. Kuhlman preached the first
regular service in the school house on alternate Sundays.  Services in
German and English.
        In 1874 a Lutheran Church and school was build and
established with-in throwing distance of the Logan school.
                                 Cemetery
        A cemetery of two acres was donated by Mr. Wagner on his
homestead and he was the first to find a resting place therein.
        The Cemetery Association was formally organized and deeds
made out May 18, 1879. Officers: Oswald Uehling, Chairman: August
Wagner, Treasurer: and Martin Luther, Sec'y.
        The remains of A. C. and J. F. Briggs and wives are
buried in Logan Cemetery, as will I, the last lineal descendant of J. F.
Briggs.
                               A Fish Story or Two
        I cannot well stop without telling a fish story.  In the
60's when the Logan Valley was in prairie, and the first bridge was
in, there were days that I saw a wagon load of fish in the clear
waters of the Logan.  One could see them for rods up and down stream
from the bridge.
        On several occasions in the fall of the year, the water
wheels were filled and stopped by the big catfish, some of them
weighing fifty pounds and more.
        The winter of 73 and 74 a cold December shut the millpond
up tight, two or three days before Christmas a warm spell came on
causing the pond to flush over the dam also fish.  In a day and one
half, Christmas day, one thousand pounds of fish were obtained
with spears.  Mr. Fouts bought 750 pounds and hauled them to Fremont.
        The task of keeping water power in order was a strenuous
one and often required help on short notice.  Faithful and true
friends and neighbors were always ready to respond to a call for help.
        Machinery and building material was hauled from Nickerson
and the new mill put into operation in June 1871, and continued
until 1888 when the mill was removed to Hooper and a steam power
installed.  Then under the firm name of Briggs and Uehling the
business was conducted for three years, J. F. Briggs retiring
from the firm.  The building erected in 1870 is still in service
today, 1930, but the inside furnishings have undergone about as many
changes as the styles of women's apparel.
                                   1871
        Dreams of a metropolis at Logan went on fairy wings when
L. D. Richards and his chain and stake gang started from Nickerson
in 71 and located the S.C.P.R.R. on the south side of the Elkhorn to
Crowell, and then on the north side to Wisner.  Mr. Richards
and his chain men made their headquarters while on the eastern end of
this division at Logan Mills.                                      
                                   1872
   Hooper located and mail service established.  Asa Briggs first
railroad agent and postmaster.                                
     
                                   1873
        Star route from Hooper to Herman, supplying Logan, Swaburg,
Admah, and Spiker.
                                      School
        The first school was held in a building built for a
residence, within 300 feet of the original mill building.  The first
teacher was Mrs. Chas. Eisley.
        A log school house was built on the Briggs' place in 1865,
furnished and finished with cottonwood desks and benches.  The
school house there today is on the original site, was built in
1872.
        Grandfather as a member of the Logan School Board
insisted on having all the months of school that the limit of levy would
allow and then adjoining districts that were not so well provided
for were free to come to the Logan school.
        I can't help but note the contrast in conditions today. 
Where in our town children complain of having to walk 7 to 10 blocks
to school, in those early days some of them walked four and others
seven miles to this school.
        Ex-State Superintendent, John M. Matzen, taught his first
term of school at Logan Dist. No. 15 and he drove the entire nine
months from his home in Hooper.  Nothing unusual, but at the close of
the year drew the entire year's salary in one order.  Is there
another record to equal this in Nebraska?
        Of the teachers of 50 years and more ago in the Logan
school, I can recall but two alive today, Mrs. R. L. Briggs 1878 and
1882 and Mrs. C. B. Noyes of Fremont, '75 or '76.  Shall we call the
roll of the old log school?  Charley Baker, Alsia Crocker, John,
Herman and Mary Monnich, Henry and Otto Uehling, John Adkins, Mr. and Mrs.
Henry Busch, Henry Schwab, Godfrey, John, George, Mary and
Louise Weigle, Rena and Netta Clark, Wm., Linda and Mary Hartung, Wm.
and Rachel Moshage, Clarence Briggs, Rosa Wagner, Moses Bishop,
Henry Geisler, Wm. and Casper Heller, Edward, Louie and Carrie
Edelman, Eoline and Adda Clark, R. L. Briggs.
                               A.C. Briggs
        A. C. Briggs was born at Plymouth Vermont, Sept. 12,
1812, the eldest of a family of five.  At 20 moved with his father to
Kalamazoo County, Mich.  Selecting the occupation of a carpenter. 
Worked in Detroit and Buffalo, N.Y. as a pattern maker.
        Married Mary Ann Noyes, a daughter of a Methodist circuit
rider in New York and back to Michigan.  In the summer of l856 he,
with his family of five children, drove a band of 700 sheep from
Michigan to Glenwood, Iowa.  The winter of '56 having been unusually
sever, one half of this flock were lost by drifting snow.  He bought
and improved 320 acres of good Iowa land.
        In the year 1861 he came to Logan, Nebraska, and bought
half interest in the Logan Mills.
        From "The Nebraskan": "In 1861 he was in the midst of the
Indian scare, his wife, who had not then moved to Nebraska heard
that her husband with other frontiersmen had been murdered but
the glad tidings of safety and 'false alarm' was received in a few
days and there was joy again in that household."
        Elected County Commissioner in 1867.
        Reelected County Commissioner in 1869 for 3 years.
        Elected to 8th Legislature of Nebraska in 1870.
        Elected Treasurer Dodge County in 1874.
        " I want to live by the roadside and be a friend to man"
must have been the thoughts and alms of Father and Mother Briggs. 
Their hospitality was unbounded and extended to one an all.
        After living in Iowa three years J. F. Briggs returned to
Michigan and back to Iowa in 1859 with Martha B. Knapp Briggs
his bride.  This made three trips by team over the 700 mile
stretch of territory.
                               Fire in Logan Bottom
        In the early days the rich bottom land of this valley grew
grass as tall a man on horseback.  A settler on a farm a few miles
north of here started plowing his field and having an over
supply of stubble and weed growth set fire to the field.
        A sudden change of wind and increasing to a gale sent
that fire down this valley in a wall reaching 30 to 40 feet high ending
after jumping the Elkhorn and stopping at Fish lake.
        A great amount of damage in loss of hay and grain was
sustained by neighboring settlers and resulted in a damage suit in Justice
Court, Jas Clayton, J. P., held in the old log school house. 
The trial lasted all afternoon and evening.  The feeling against
the man on trial was running hot and to save the man from bodily harm,
father spirited him away and sheltered him overnight.  With
all his worldly possessions he could not have paid one-tenth of the
loss.
        A settler moving near Wisner drove into flood water with
a four horse team.  The lead team became frightened at the rush of
water through the willows and the lead team turned down stream into
deep water and were drowned.  He had just bought this team paying
$400 dollars for them.
        An editor in an uncomfortable position happened in the same
place in the road.  Having sold his paper at Scribner he was
moving to Blair to locate, driving a single horse and top buggy.  His
horse became frightened at the rushing water turned short and upset
the buggy.  Like a drowning man he clung to the first straw and
that was a buggy wheel and he went gyrating around as on a merry-go-
round. Mr. Stecher and I were watching him from the hill and
concluded he needed assistance so we hastily made a raft and went out and
rescued him.  If you cared to search you could probably find enough type
there in the road to make a printers pi.
        It was seldom that we were without a boat at the mill but
it sometimes happened.  On one occasion Mr. Peter Saspair had
urgent business in Fremont and came down there to cross the creek then
being about 80 rods wide.  The only thing at hand was a 16
foot hog trough.  A cousin of mine L. R. Kreader, captained the craft and
landed him safely on the other side.
        The spring of 1880 was an unusually wet one, the water
flooded the lower floor of the mill 5 times from April to July. 
During the greatest flow of the Logan and Elkhorn Asa Briggs, Irving
Groves and another man started to Hooper for the mail.  None of the three
could swim.  There was a continuous flow of water from Logan to
Hooper. They rowed a direct line for Hooper but when crossing the
Elkhorn the swift flow of the water carried them into a tree and
capsized their boat.  Two of them clung to the tree and one to the boat
so that they came through safe but wet.
        I have spent many pleasant moments in my youth from this
hill top sixty years ago, viewing these valleys and surrounding
territory.  The view extended to Fontanelle, to Saunders county
south of Fremont and nearly to Tekamah, northeast and nearly
to West Point, northwest.  Go up there today, what a change, a forest in
every direction and a view of only a few miles.  But those were
happy days good will and friendship abounding.  The right hand
of Fellowship always extended and the latch string out at every
home.
        This community has been a credit to the Commonwealth of
Nebraska.  Loyal, home-loving and industrious.  In three score
and ten years there has never been a contribution to the
penitentiary of Nebraska.
        To the historical society of Dodge County, the members of
the Dodge County board of supervisors and the veterans of the
World War who have taken so prominent interests in this honor to our
pioneer ancestors, I wish to assure you that the honors are appreciated.
  
__________________________________________________________________

        The Schwab and Wagner journey from Wisconsin to Nebraska 
in 1861 as told by Mrs. Rose Wagner Stecher:

        We started April 1st from Madison and landed in Nebraska on
July 4th.  Travelled with oxen and covered wagon.  We found an
abandoned loghouse about one mile from Logan mill.  It had one
room below and one room above. It was not plastered.  Both families
moved in.  There were six of us and five of the Schwabs.  During
fall and winter Schwabs built their house on land that is still owned by
their grandson, Harry Schwab.  We lived in rather close
quarters the first winter.  There were two stoves, two beds, tables and
chairs besides a large chest that was used as a cupboard.  While we
travelled for three months we only had the stove out twice for
washing.
        All we lived on was toasted bread and milk.  Mother toasted
bread all winter.  Many sacks were filled.  We had two cows. 
Milk was put in a large jar.  So it was the same bill of fare every
day including some cured meat of our own.  We found only two places
where we could buy food.  One of them had only potatoes and the
other had eggs.  We bought a large wash basin full of eggs for
five cents.  Many a day we traveled from four in the morning until
sun down with no water all day, oxen and cows having their tongues
hanging out of parched mouths.  More than once we expected to
die from thirst and heat.  We did not have much milk as cows
traveling all day could not give milk.  I was eight years old but that
scene was stamped on my memory where it will remain until death
erases it.
        During the winter we had heavy snows and blizzards.  The
older boys slept upstairs on feather beds, no beds.  They were often
covered with several inches of snow mornings.  My father George
Wagner pre-empted 160 acres which he afterwards homesteaded.  In
1862 we built a loghouse.  In 1864 father was taken sick and the
nearest town was Omaha.  No chance to get a doctor.  Sixty
miles is a long distance when oxen were the only conveyance to travel
with.
   It took a week for the round trip.  There were no cemeteries in
those days, so father gave 2 acres from his homestead for the
Logan Cemetery.  He died March l4, 1865 and was the first man buried
there.  The snow was very deep and there was no place to get a
coffin.  We had to make one out of cottonwood boards that were
sawed near Logan Mill.  We had only a common saw and no plane.  It was
made coffin shape top and bottom alike.  They painted it with
ashes and water.  A great difference between coffins then and now.
        I think people were more satisfied then with our simple
ways than now with all the splendor and high living.