The Motor Dream
The Motor Dream story involves a Mill, Stable, Inn, Smokehouse, Cooperage, and a Bridge.
Motor was platted in 1867 with a Mill as the focal point. In early days of settlement settlers dreamed big and this dream involved three elements: the Turkey River, a limestone area, and available timber.
The Stable originally was intended to house horses and wagons of guests staying in the Inn nearby. The gambrel roof was added when it became a dairy barn about 1940. It was used as a dairy barn until 1983, when the site was acquired by the Clayton County Conservation Board. The Stable is being remodeled into a community gathering space.
The Inn (above) once provided rooms and meals to farmers who waited for their grain to be milled. It also served as a home for several farm families and now is being renovated as a Welcome Center with rooms for rent.
The six-story Mill was where farmers in the area brought their grain to be milled, powered by turbines turned by water from the Turkey River, which ran through the Mill on the basement level.
Only a hundred feet from the Mill was the Cooperage (above) where barrels were made that were used to store and ship the flour and cornmeal produced in the Mill. The barrels were made of staves of white oak from the nearby forest.
The Smokehouse, the last building constructed, was used to cure meat. It also may have served as an icehouse.
In 1899 a steel Bridge was constructed over the Turkey River that replaced the original wood-sided bridge built in 1868. This Bridge was necessary for farmers to bring their grain across the river to the Mill. One span was washed out during the flood of 1991, and it was totally destroyed in the flood of 2008. A replica, built in 2012, made the historic site again complete.
The town of Motor never materialized and the Motor Mill only operated for a few years. However, its history and its buildings live on and merit a prominent place in the history of Clayton County. The Motor Mill Historic Site is located at 23002 Grain Road, Elkader. www.motormill.org
The Motor Mill Historic Site is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is preserved and protected by the Clayton County Conservation Board and Motor Mill Foundation at 29862 Osborne Road, Elkader 52043. (2023 photos)
(Thanks to Larry and Margaret Stone for updates.)
Paint Creek Valley Barn
Blog #2, sent in July 2020, featured this barn. However, many persons have been added to the list since I began writing this blog over three years ago. The subject matter is the same but the excitement regarding this barn hasn’t diminished and new discoveries continue to be made.
This photo was taken in 2014 in Allamakee County in the Paint Creek Valley area. It didn’t look like there was much hope for saving the barn as it had sat empty for many years. However, a new owner decided it was worth saving.
Kudos to the owners for restoring this 1906 barn in recent years. It is a bank barn with the entrance to the loft located on the back side. Major renovations included a new concrete foundation and new concrete floor inside, addition of four double doors, replacement of a few boards and windows, a new steel roof, and paint. It is now used for storage of equipment. The antiques on display were found hidden in weeds around the barn. (2021 photo)
Thirty-seven people were standing on the framework of the barn in the photo below. This day was truly a day to remember, as the itinerant photographer documented this momentous event in the family’s life. More of the story and this photo can be found on page 13 in Iowa Barns yesterday and today.
Wanted! The owners would like to give the log building next to the barn to anyone willing to dismantle it, take it, and restore it for his/her own use. The smallest building is gone. If a reader is interested, please contact me via email to discuss this possibility.
Grain bin home
Grain bins everywhere are being transformed into homes. In Allamakee County, this one has been converted as the Kelly’s weekend getaway.
They restored a barn nearby, built in 1906, and this grain bin is their latest project. It has a spacious kitchen and sitting area (See photo below.), two bedrooms, bathroom, novel storage areas, washer and dryer, deck, and an attached grain bin garage. It also has a new roof installed over the original roof, with a layer of insulation between the two. (2023 photos)
Round red tile barn
This red clay tile barn in southeast Iowa’s Van Buren County was the home of dairy cows when it was built in 1918. The stalls were situated around the perimeter and hay was stored in the loft. Brothers Warren and Clarence Brown built identical barns three miles apart near Stockport, Clarence’s was built in 1921. Note the abundance of windows on the south side that provided natural light for the cows.
After it was not used as a dairy barn, boxes for laying hens were constructed on the north side. Hens had the barn for themselves when they were not in a box laying eggs. The barn is not in use today.
Barn window flowers
Who built this 40 x 72-foot barn in Dubuque County? Would you believe it was a 16-year-old, the first of 12 barns this young man built in this area? Who had it built? Jack Smith’s grandfather, who was 66 years old at the time.
The barn was built in 1917 using white oak trees from the Smith farm for the framing and fir for the rest. With a height of 42 feet, the loft can store tons of hay and straw for livestock, and it still does.
Since 1853, which was not long after Iowa became a state, six generations have lived on this farm. An interesting note is that Horatio Sanford, a government land agent in Dubuque, bought tracts from settlers who changed their plans, and then re-sold them for a profit. This is one he re-sold to Jack’s grandfather, starting the Smith tradition, with Jack and Anna Smith being the current owners. A unique barn feature is flowers in the windows. How many barns in Iowa have flowers in windows? Very few. Note that this one has real flowers in three of the lower-level windows.
A great invention
The modern history of threshing grain began with John Froelich, a 43-old farmer in the tiny Clayton County village of Froelich.
John Froelich, looking for ways to make farming more efficient, invented a new one-cylinder gasoline engine. Connected to a threshing machine, it was used to thresh 72,000 bushels of small grain in the fields of South Dakota in 1892. It was also the first gasoline-powered engine that had both forward and reverse gears.
Previously, steam-powered engines were used which weren’t very efficient, were polluting, were heavy to transport long distances, and sometimes resulted in fires that destroyed the crop they were harvesting. What an improvement this new engine was! Pictured above is a photo of the original engine used in the harvest, courtesy of the Froelich museum.
Inventor Froelich took his engine (actually a tractor) to Waterloo to market it to businessmen there. A company was formed with him as president. He later left the company to pursue other interests but tractor experimentation continued. In 1912 the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company introduced the first “Waterloo Boy,” a kerosene-burning Model “R”. One hundred eighteen were sold that year, and a new Model “N”, which had two forward speeds, was marketed in 1915. In 1918 the Waterloo Company became part of the John Deere Company.
Today, the headquarters of the John Deere Company is in Moline, Illinois, and is one of the largest tractor-producing plants in America.
Above is a Waterloo Boy tractor, a 1918 Model 2030, powered by kerosene, driven each year in the tractor parade at Carstens Farm Days, located at 32409 380th St., Shelby, Iowa. Farm Days will be held on September 9 and 10, 2023.
The Froelich Fall Festival (Fall-der-All), where a model of John Froelich’s one-cylinder engine will be on display, will be held September 23-24, 2023.
Froelich Tractor Museum
Froelich, an unincorporated village in Clayton County, was named after German immigrant Henry Froelich, who arrived in 1847. Within a short time there was a blacksmith shop, sawmill, stockyards, and even a depot.
This is also where John Froelich (1849-1933), Henry’s son, invented a one-cylinder engine that signaled the beginning of the history of tractors. This amazing invention will be featured in the next blog. He received 14 known patents in his lifetime, which include the one-cylinder gasoline propelled engine, a water-cooling radiator for internal combustion engines, a mechanical corn picker, a dishwashing machine, and more. He was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991.
The site of the Froelich Museum barn, visible from Highway 18, can’t be missed. The barn, built long after Henry died, has exhibits in the loft, and is available for rent for celebratory occasions.
Behind the restored general store (see photo below) is the museum where a model of the engine John Froelich invented is on display, as well as an 1866 country school, passenger depot, freight depot, and warehouse.
The Froelich Fall Festival (Fall-der-All) wlll be held Sept. 23-24, 2023.
Check the website www.Froelichtractor.com for more information. (2023 photos)
Old barn/new focus
Pioneers made their way across Iowa, beginning in the 1830s. The lines on this map approximate the patterns of land acquisition during settlement as families moved from southeast to northwest between 1833 and 1870.
Pockets of settlement occurred in every part of the state. Norwegians arrived in the Decorah area and surrounding counties in the early 1830s. Immigrants from the Netherlands settled in Pella around 1846. German immigrants settled in many areas around 1850, and in northwest Marshall County brothers and sisters of several related families immigrated from Ireland between 1848 and 1850.
Barns were a necessity for these early pioneers, and their creativity and ingenuity was evident in their buildings. The Gehlen barn was constructed in 1839 by immigrants from Luxembourg who settled near St. Donatus. This Jackson County barn, believed to be the earliest one in Iowa, is located on Highway 52, minutes from both Dubuque and Bellevue.
Now the barn’s focus has changed. It hosts parties, family reunions, concerts, craft fairs, barn tours, and more, as well as a brewery. It is a great example of the continued use of a barn (2012 photo). See more of the Gehlen barn story in Iowa Barns yesterday and today, page 55.
(Map published by the Malcolm Price Laboratory School, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, 2003)
Big rocks for barns
The Nosbisch barn in Chickasaw County near New Hampton, honored as a Century Farm in 2010, has a barn with an amazing history. In 2022, it was also honored by Wallaces Farmer as “Iowa’s Most Beautiful Barn”.
How was it built? In 1926, a stonecutter spent an entire year cutting and placing hundreds of granite stones of varying colors to construct the eight-foot high foundation.
Pictured below shows the huge glacier-deposited stones in one small area of the foundation. The large light-grey granite boulder on the left measures 3 feet x 1 foot. Imagine cutting and fitting hundreds of these heavy stones in place. In Blog #77 (June 4) is a barn in adjacent Floyd County that also has glacial erratic stones in the foundation.
After the foundation was finished, the loft was built. The loft entrance was an earthen ramp, making it a bank barn. Three openings were made in the loft floor so that the hay and straw could be dropped down to the basement level. There was room for 60 loads of loose hay, and straw from 40 acres of oats, but over 50 years ago, large and small bales became the norm.
Inside the basement of the barn there was space for 14 draft horses and stanchions for 28 cows, as well as concrete feeders and room for milk handling and feed storage. This level has been altered to make it suitable for the beef cattle they raise today.
Randy and Morgan Nosbisch are the fourth generation of their family on this farm; their sons are the fifth generation.
A striped round barn
This striped round barn, located in Clayton County on Highway 52 south of Guttenberg in eastern Iowa, is like no other Iowa barn. The 36-inch wide vertical sections are metal (painted white), crimped to fit together with the neighboring sections. The roof structure is made up of 15 sections giving it the appearance of a dome as viewed from outside.
Louis Friedlein designed this barn and hired it built in 1914. It is 72 feet in diameter, has five doors, a cupola topped by an unusual aerator, and a 12-foot diameter wood stave silo inside. It is also a bank barn, with the earthen ramp up to the entrance built between two retaining walls, one wall visible on the far left.
It was originally a general-purpose barn, with stanchions for dairy cattle around the silo, as well as a milk room and pens for other livestock. On the upper level was a granary, a feed room, and a large loft that extended around the silo.
It is still in use today as a cattle barn, owned by Larry Friedlein, grandson of Louis. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Chickens at home
The Bruxvoort chicken house near New Sharon in Mahaska County, owned by Nancine Bruxvoort, was built in 1917. The flocks of chickens raised here were lucky to have plenty of space to roam inside. Note the numerous windows on the south side that provided natural light as well as fresh air when they were tilted open. It still exists as an example of bygone days, although it has not been in use for many years. In the intervening years a large tree has shaded the building, which would make it less than desirable for use today. (2023 photo)
Another example is a much smaller 1920s chicken house now at Lesanville, a historic village site in Ringgold County, east of Mt. Ayr along Hwy 2. It is referred to on this historic Ramsey farm as “Aunt Jennie’s chicken house,” where she fed both hens and roosters. In this view it is apparent how the tilted windows allow for ventilation but keep out rain. (2013 photo)
Stonemason's handiwork
Stonemason extraordinaire. Richard and Bridget Buckley Cummings emigrated from Ireland in 1850 and settled in Floyd County east of Charles City. In 1875 they purchased 160 acres of land, and Richard built this small stone barn.
A Cummings great-granddaughter, Kathy McCann, took this photo in 2015 and recently sent a copy to me. On May 12, 2023, I discovered to my dismay that the loft had fallen due to storms in the area a few years earlier, although the tiny milk house on the right is still intact. See photo below.
Matt Crayne, naturalist with the Chickasaw County Conservation Board, explains that the colorful stones are glacier-transported fieldstone fragments of granite and other minerals that differ from the local bedrock. His colleague commented that some of the stones would have needed to be split in order to get the flat faces seen here.
Next to the tiny milk house was another amazing discovery. There is a solid concrete “fence” extending from the milk house to the barn, with 3-D images of a heart, spade, club, and diamond embedded in the concrete, as seen below. It may be that he was fond of playing cards in his spare time.
What an industrious immigrant he was: not only a farmer, but also a stonemason.
Horses/farming
It is spring, the time to prepare the fields for planting. Over a century ago, it was common to be disking with five horses, as these men were doing in 1908.
Amish farmers use horses for all aspects of farming today. On May 11, 2023, in the Hazleton area, I saw a number of Amish farmers disking in a setting resembling the above photograph.
In 2022, an Amish farmer in Ohio was disking a huge field using seven horses. My Iowa Amish contact thought it unusual to be using seven horses, as five is common. Special attachments would be needed to hitch seven horses together. It wasn’t possible to ask the driver exactly what he was doing, but some observers suggest that an additional two younger horses were being trained in pulling the disk around the field. See the photo below.
Church/barn
A house of God first, then a barn. The barn pictured above was dedicated as a place of worship for a congregation of Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). The loft was actually the worship space while the ground level was used for livestock and grain storage. An article in the Oakland Herald quoted an Elder in a late 1800s prayer service who prophesied that the branch would scatter and the House of God would be inhabited by animals. That’s what happened.
The Mormon Farm Creek branch of Latter-Day Saints was first located in Mills County near Henderson. Pioneers settled along Farm Creek in the fall of 1849 and spring of 1850, using a church for their worship services. That church is now gone. In the spring of 1858 a branch of about 40 members was “raised up.” It was reorganized twice and the members met in Farm Creek school nearby until 1890 when the barn/church was finished at a cost of $1725. Membership declined when families moved away, and most of the remaining members left in the early 1920s or attended services in nearby towns. The barn then became a house for livestock.
For many years Harvey and Darlene Bolton owned the farm and used the barn. Harvey died in 1998, Darlene died in September of 2022, and the farm has been sold. Farm Creek was a landmark in the area, and a sign designating the Farm Creek School site is located at the driveway entrance to the house and barn. (2023 photo)
Rabbits everywhere
Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits! For the past three years Jay and Lori Straight have been raising New Zealand rabbits by the hundreds in the above barn. It’s an old barn, built in 1890 by Elisha Mahoney, with the overhang added 25 years ago for a tractor and other equipment.
Elisha Mahoney’s father Stephen and his wife Margaret settled in Maryland in the early 1800s and planned to join a group of Latter Day Saints going west when Margaret died suddenly. Undaunted by Margaret’s death, Steven headed down the Ohio River by steamboat with his 11 children, stopped in Kanesville, abandoned traveling further west, married a young woman who had helped him care for his children on the trip, and bought this farm in Harrison County.
One of six children of the second marriage, Elisha, born in 1860, became a farmer, stock raiser, and breeder of Norman horses, in addition to building a 30’ x 30’ home and the 50’ x 50’ brick barn seen here. Building a barn with two gable peaks was most unusual and building it of brick was also not common, but he operated a brick kiln so that made it easy. He even covered it with stucco and also added a brick wall down the middle. His Norman horses lived in high style.
The Straights bought the farm 46 years ago, removed the brick divider, and have adapted it for raising cattle and hogs, auctions, and the weddings of two of their children. They participate in rabbit shows in Iowa and surrounding states and win many ribbons. The New Zealand breed exists in five colors: black, blue, white, red, and broken (white with patches of red, black, or brown). Pick a color, they’re all here, and every six weeks over 100 are sold to Tom’s Meat Market in Omaha. It’s a great barn, filled with rabbits everywhere.
Happy Easter #2
The celebration of Easter is a Christian tradition as well as a time to celebrate with family and friends. Easter Sunday in the Orthodox tradition is celebrated April 16 in Ukraine and in many other countries.
Below are two historic Ukrainian Easter postcards. It is a hope that the war will end soon so their children can enjoy a peaceful spring as seen here, and that the farmers will be able to plant and harvest their crops.
Happy Easter!!!
The cirrus clouds pictured above are made up of delicate feathery ice crystals. Farmers especially watch these clouds with interest since cirrus clouds indicate an approaching change in weather.
I hope you have had a joyful Easter. May these antique postcards, one in Swedish, bring you to the end of a pleasant day.
Colorful Wall Art
Colorful murals exist in many Iowa cities. Carolyn Blattel-Britton (1955-2019), an artist from Zearing, painted this farm scene covering the side of a main street building in the Story County town of Collins. In 2022, forty-one years after this photo was taken, it still looks good, although trees on an adjacent property now obscure a view from the street.
Mechanicsville was platted in 1855 and was so named because some of the early settlers were mechanics. Farmers in that era fixed their own machinery or found a local blacksmith for machinery repairs. Note the barn, silo, pheasant, geese, corn, flowers, and stylized cedar trees. This town is in Cedar County, thus “HEAVEN AMONGST THE CEDARS,” are the words in the arch.
Railroads played a critical role in pioneer days before the existence of cars and trucks. Farm women went by train to nearby towns for household items, and the men shipped their livestock to market by train. The town is in O’Brien County, founded in the early 1870s. It was named after George Sanborn, president of the Iowa and Dakota Division of the Milwaukee Railroad, at that time called the McGregor and Missouri Railway. This small town even had an 18-stall roundhouse visible in the mural on the right. The last passenger train ran from Sanborn to Sheldon in 1960.
Alton, another northwest Iowa town in nearby Sioux County, was laid out in 1872 but called East Orange for its first ten years. This huge mural features an American flag, flowers, rows of steel bins, a tractor, a combine, a steam engine, and children having fun. Look for murals in the towns you visit this summer.
German Hausbarn
This German Hausbarn, originally built in 1660 in the village of Offenseth in Schleswig-Holstein, is located in Manning, which was founded in 1881 by German immigrants from that state.
This barn was dismantled, shipped to Manning and re-assembled in the 1990s by German craftsmen, and is now the focal point of the Hausbarn-Heritage Park. The thatch came from Germany, dried before being shipped to Iowa, and was installed by the artisans. The photo of the thatch below reveals the thick layers of reeds effective in repelling water.
Hausbarns are still found in Germany. Sometimes the animals and family both live on the lower level, but often the family lives on the upper level and the animals on the lower level. This provides ease in caring for the animals, especially in wintry conditions. This design also helps to provide heat for the farm family, assuming they can endure the odor.
A few hundred feet to the south of the barn on top of the hill is Trinity Church, prominent in the area for over 125 years. After the congregation realized they could no longer survive financially, funds were raised by the Manning Heritage Foundation to move it to the Hausbarn-Heritage Park where it stands today.
In addition to the Hausbarn and church, the Leet-Hassler farmstead nearby has a gambrel barn, a 1915 Craftsman bungalow, and several other buildings that preserve an aspect of Carroll County’s farming heritage that is rapidly disappearing. Check the website for open hours to the Hausbarn and farmstead.
The Frye Farm
The Frye farm near Maysville is an example of a model farm, with this well-preserved barn as the focal point. The buildings, once white but now red, all have the original siding.
Susan Frye’s great-grandfather William, grandfather Arnold, and great-uncle Alfred collaborated to build the structures shown in this blog, as well as a brick home, garage, and chicken coop, between 1925 and 1935.
The barn was originally a dairy barn, then housed hogs until the early 1980s, followed by equipment storage, and now used for Susan’s Community Supported Agriculture and flower business. The farrowing barn and the crib, both pictured below, were used until the mid-1980s, at which time the crib became storage for lumber salvaged from the original buildings that dated from the late 1800s.
Susan’s father Bernard used the machine shop pictured below until the early 1990s for his projects as a woodworker, carpenter and antique car restorer. She and her husband Mike Kienzle bought the Frye homestead from her parents in 1994, which included a black walnut grove planted by her father in the early 1960s. Since that time they have added over 100 more fruit, nut, and other native trees. Susan and Mike are to be commended for their outstanding farm in Scott County.
