Chapter 7, pages 41-56
What creates a town? Two of Mills County’s towns, Glenwood and White Cloud, were started before there were railroads or substantial population in the county. Glenwood served emigrants headed for the west after J.W. Coolidge, one of the Mormons migrating to Utah, stopped there and put up a saw and grist mill on Keg Creek. He noticed that there was enough custom to warrant a store, so started a mercantile company and the town soon had other business enterprises spring up.
White Cloud, too, grew from a mill, although its first commercial enterprise was started by a Mr. Hill who, reported the History of 1881, operated a ferry across the Nishnabotna river there “at a very early day.” The reference was somewhat indefinite as the historian noted that if Mr. Hill didn’t operate the ferry across the Nishna at White Cloud, he was proprietor of one near that point and he then stated that “The records and all information with reference to this ferry have long since been destroyed.” Since ferries had to be licensed even in that early day, no doubt there were some records made. The site was originally one of three convenient for fording the river in the area, others being some five miles north near the Josiah and Otha Wearin places and near the present site of Randolph.
The White Cloud mill was put up in 1852 by Henry Hamaker and was, according to a brief history of it printed in The Malvern Leader in 1905, a rather primitive affair, perhaps because of the limitation of materials available. Mr. Hamaker put up a log and sod-packed dam across the Nishnabotna which has a very small drop per mile in Mills County. The dam was about eight feet high and permitted a mill race that was directed against a water wheel with a vertical shaft for the power train.
Mr. Hamaker had great skill as a carpenter and millwright and in due course put a bridge across the Nishna above the mill and expected to charge toll for passage across this until he could recover its costs. He soon built a larger mill, showing such skill that it was long considered a model of efficiency. Its main supports above the ground and mill race were of huge 9 ¼ by 9 ¼ inch oak dimensions pieces which seemingly were as sound when the building was razed some eighty-three years later as when they were put in. Its grain runs, of white pine, and controls were carefully designed and crafted. Although newly-developed equipment was added through the years of its operation, the basic framing and design were considered to be an outstanding example of the millwright’s art.
In due time Henry’s son, George, succeeded his father as operator of the mill. He maintained and further developed the standard of quality which had pleased customers using the mill in pioneer times. Farmers from a distance of thirty miles brought their grain there to be ground, whiling away the time as this was made into flour, by fishing below the dam, generally taking home some choice channel cat or carp along with the milled products. As business continued good, improvements in equipment were added – a bran sifter, purifier, dust collector, speed governor, etc.
George in recounting the mill’s history in 1905, said that it had a capacity of fifty barrels of flour a day, and could supply customers with bran, meal and other needs. In 1882 its flour was marketed under the brand name of “White Cloud Chief” as its straight grade, and this was considered to be as good a flour made from spring wheat as could be found. Otha D. Wearin of Hastings has a flour bag of the White Cloud mill’s “Hamaker’s Best,” which may have been the fall wheat product.
Fortunately the water level of the Nishnabotna provided ample power for the mill almost all of the time. In July 1895, following a very dry year, it was necessary to stop grinding briefly – a very exceptional experience. So Mr. Hamaker made a hurried trip to Kansas City to see about getting a steam boiler, although he made no purchase at that time. There were times when it was difficult to get the quality of wheat needed and the miller turned out more bran than other products. In his 1905 interview Mr. Hamaker pointed out that since his father founded the White Cloud mill at least twenty-two other mills had been established in the area he served but only a very few still managed to continue operation. He listed those in Mills County as: two at Glenwood, three on Keg Creek, one at Pacific City, two at Emerson, three on Silver Creek, two at Tabor and one at Malvern. He noted that only one on Silver Creek and one at Malvern continued.
But a new threat to the mill appeared. Down in Missouri farmers along the Nishnabotna had employed a large dredge to dig a straight channel for the river which they hoped would confine it to its banks in flood time and avoid inundating their land in the periods of heavy rainfall. This movement had already been suggested in Mills County and a number of land owners in the Henderson vicinity had made some effort to promote a similar plan for all of the river south of them.
This interest strengthened after 1912, each succeeding period of high water stimulating it. By 1917 a legal drainage district had been formed and in due course a large floating dredge could be seen at work, scooping out a straight channel down the stream and eventually scooping out the White Cloud mill dam as well. While much good farm land was obtained (and its value to land owners enhanced) by the big drainage ditch, it didn’t meet universal approval. Conservationists pointed out that “the Lord knew how to build a river,” and that man’s efforts to make the beautiful Nishna into a straight-flow stream would have baneful effects on the ecology. But the interest then in recreation and wildlife was less emphasized and land owners, despite the fact that occasional floods were still experienced, enjoyed an increase in their tillable acres from the project.
Some years before this occurred George Hamaker had sold his mill to John Hammack. Mr. Hammack generally ran it in an efficient fashion. He added a steam boiler to its equipment to provide steam heat. When he saw the inevitability of his loss of water power he gave thought to putting in steam or gasoline power, and did try a steam engine using his heating boiler but this proved insufficient. By this time the trend toward concentration of industrial manufacturing had become quite marked and he saw that it would be difficult to compete with the huge mills which were being developed in major cities. So the Scriptural day came when “..the grinders shall cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened..” and the White Cloud mill’s door was shut. The huge frame structure stood idle for nearly a decade, not deteriorating as rapidly as do most unused buildings, a romantic remnant of the past which was admired and wondered at by new generations who came to the old mill and dam site for recreation. In 1937 it was sold at auction for $710.00 and razed, a huge crowd coming for a final look at the historic old structure and admiring anew the skill and craftsmanship of the millwright who built it.
Even after the river was straightened there were periods of flood and eventually the main bridge was washed out and replaced by a suspension footbridge, known as the “swinging bridge” to youngsters who had to cross it to get to the White Cloud rural school, and others who enjoyed tramping on it to experience the unstable swaying.
Soon after the mill was established a small business community sprang up which was known as White Cloud. Mr. W.H. Taft, the early historian who lived on a farm just east of White Cloud, told how the town acquired its name. “In the spring of 1855, after the town site (had been) surveyed,” he wrote, “a council of neighbors was called to decide on a name. Hoosiers, Kentuckians, Missourians, Ohioans, Yankees, fire-eaters, the radicals, old men, young men, church people, sinners, old ladies, young ladies ..suggested names from Sour-Mash to Zionville..” So delegates from the Hamakers retired for the greater part of the night, and their chief announced on his return to the council that “in a vision of a steamboat, the name of White Cloud had been revealed to him. This was instantly adopted by a rising vote.”
Mr. Greenwalt of Hastings wrote that when he first visited White Cloud it had two or three stores with the post office in one kept by Jim Miller, the Fowler blacksmith shop and a doctor, S.T. Brothers. When John D. Paddock, the first merchant to put a store in Malvern, stopped overnight in White Cloud in June of 1869 he reported there were “two general stores, drug store, post office, a place to eat and sleep, a blacksmith shop and a skilled physician, Dr. Brothers. No saloon – which spoke well in those days for the good citizenship of the village and country round about.”
Mr. Paddock had come out from Chicago to investigate the possibility of starting a store in a pioneer community along the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad, which was then in the process of construction. He wrote in his Brief History of Malvern, “It was a tragedy play, that the trail of the iron horse did not take the route that let to this village (of White Cloud), but it did not and the rails since laid have been the magnet that has drawn it all away but the mill.”
Louis Leu of Malvern recalls that when Anton and Emilie Warnke and their six-year old daughter, Louise Maria, came to America from Germany in 1868, they settled first at White Cloud where Anton, a shoemaker by trade, opened a store, making boots and shoes besides repairing them. When his supplies of leather ran low he would walk to Omaha to buy more, having them shipped out by stage coach although Anton would walk back to White Cloud to save fare.
As Mr. Paddock indicated, the rails did draw away the White Cloud business houses. Mr. Warnke removed his store to Hastings, as did some others. Sheldon Bros. went to Emerson and put up that community’s first business building. John N. Sheldon put up a new building in Malvern and moved his stock of general merchandise from White Cloud. James S. Miller came also from that community to start a blacksmith shop. Dr. Brothers moved not only his practice and stock of medicinal drugs, but his building as well. Indeed, he was instrumental in giving Malvern its name.
The railroad’s Town Lot Company, which had many of the new communities platted, gave those between Glenwood and Red Oak names of famous authors – Hawthorne, Emerson and Milton, and the latter was the first name for the Malvern site – probably stemming from that of the blind English poet although residents of the village believe it was in honor of a nearby pioneer, Lieutenant Milton Summers, who had died from wounds received on a southern battlefield during the Civil War. When a petition was sent to the Post Office Department asking for an office in Milton, it was learned that there was another of that name in the state and the request could not be granted. Although Milton Station was adopted for the name and the post office established, much confusion resulted because of the first Milton office. So when the change was sought, Dr. Brothers advanced the name of his former community in Ohio which had stemmed from the city of Malvern, England.
Thus in a comparatively short time nearly all of the business interests in White Cloud, except the mill, discontinued. The post office which had been established March 28, 1856, by Samuel L. Jamison, was kept in one of the remaining stores until June 13, 1886 and then moved to the east side of the river where a small community had been established at the junction of the Wabash and Hastings Sidney branch of the Burlington railway. Although it had been named Lawrence, the post office was reopened July 26, 1886, by Jonathan Wilbur and continued to be called White Cloud. This office was closed April 23, 1891, and its records moved to Hastings. The junction was still called White Cloud by the railroads.
Lawrence had one store for several years and Geo. F. Salyers & Co. also put up an elevator there. The Wabash also installed a water tank there to supply its steam locomotives. But this community was never robust and lasted only a few years. The name, Lawrence, never gained wide acceptance and the community on the east side of the river generally was called White Cloud.
Dora Borene (Mrs. Galen) Boles of Eugene, Oregon, remembers that the community sometimes had exciting problems. She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gust Borene and wrote recently: “We moved to the Angus farm five miles south of White Cloud in 1900 and at that time there were only the section house, water tower, combination depot and dwelling for the man who ran the pump house; and also a small house on each side of the road just west of the road (railway) crossing.
“Probably about 1892, my uncle was living in the section house at White Cloud. My aunt was washing, carrying the hot water outside to rub clothes on a wash board in tubs set on a bench. She had built up a fire in the cook stove to boil men’s underwear when sparks set the roof on fire. She dashed inside, snatched up the baby and with the two-year old girl, ran to the depot. The pump man and wife came to help her. She put the baby on the floor of the living room of their quarters.
“A man driving along the road tied his horse to the fence, and another man plowing in a nearby field came also. The section houses were two stories, so they were able to get everything out of the house, even the boiler of clothes, except the hot stove. Then they noticed sparks had carried above the water tank and the roof of the depot was burning. All dashed there, got the baby, who was asleep on the floor, out safely and got some things from that building.
“About that time the morning freight came along but the buildings burned. It stopped where the section hands were working and (trainmen) told my uncle. He came back at once on the handcar. The railroad moved in two cars for the families to live in until the house could be rebuilt.”
Mrs. Boles also sketched a map which showed the buildings in the community as she remembered them.
The White Cloud school was on the west side of the river so pupils who lived on the east side sometimes had problems getting there when the bridge was out. The April 5, 1883, issue of The Malvern Leader commented on the situation in a letter from an anonymous writer who signed the piece “Cottonwood”. This also gave a good review of the various bridges built since the first was thrown across the river and suggested the stress caused by the river’s division of the school district. It follows:
“After an interruption of communications for nearly two weeks, White Cloud and Lawrence have again become connected by completion of a new bridge across the Nishnabotny (sic.). The county authorities have this time furnished us with a first-class structure, the only one of that grade, of all the four that have been built here. The first bridge placed over the river was at this place, though not on the site of the present one, and was a private bridge, erected by the energy and at the expense of Henry Hamaker, the original locater of the mill site, builder of a saw mill (now extinct) and of the old flouring mill; proprietor and founder of the town of White Cloud, and himself an expert millwright and builder of boats and bridges. Hamaker’s bridge was placed above the dam; the substructure was of oak posts framed into position through the ice, in the winter of 1854, and the superstructure completed in the spring of ’55.
“The public was allowed to use the bridge on payment of a moderate toll, and this condition continued until the spring of '57 when the proprietor was bought out by County Judge Tyson, and the bridge became public property. On account of breaks in the dam, causing the current to settle the mud sills unevenly, the bridge was rendered unsafe, so in 1861 a contract for building a second one was let to James Mullen of Glenwood, and the location changed to its present site below the mill. This work lasted until 1875 when it gave way under a drove of cattle, and bridge No. 3 was undertaken by a Kansas City firm and succeeded it. Now we have a Howe truss, completed under the direction of Supervising Architect Robbins, and Chief Engineer Dyson, which bids fair to last longer and to be stauncher than any two of the former ones.
“White Cloud township is now provided with crossings over the Nishna at her northern and southern boundaries as well as at three intermediate points, yet so hostile to each other are the two divisions formed by the river, that separate polling places have been established for her voters, and now, alas! a fratricidal war, about a school house site and tax, has lately been inaugurated in the old first school district of the township (now No. 2) that threatens to cleave its territory into discordant sections, and to array belligerent masses of citizens on either bank of the impetuous stream whose pellucid waters will, perchance ere long, be crimsoned with the blood of friends, kinsmen and neighbors. Let us hope that the completion of this new avenue of intercourse will bind the now jarring factions together and as they meet on its spacious roadway, the chieftains of the east and of the west, like the emperors on the raft at Tilsit, will construct a treaty that shall re-unite the disturbed district during the continuance, at least, of the present generation on the stage of action.”
Mrs. Rena Bass, a long time resident of White Cloud township, recalled the bridge used in her childhood days was a covered bridge, painted red. There was also a bridge over a marshy stretch just east of the river bridge, so that it was widened in the center to provide a passing lane for the convenience of heavy traffic.
Before the river was straightened it provided excellent fishing and the White Cloud vicinity was a favorite spot for picnics and outings. Much of the natural river bed was sand-filled and except in times of high water the turbidity was minimal and the stream fully lived up to the title of the song published by a local composer along its course: The Silvery Nishnabotna. Long after the town was gone the romantic confines of the old mill and the lovely stream attracted those seeking recreation, or perhaps romance. So the name White Cloud had particularly pleasant connotations and certainly it has been one of the area’s favorite former communities.
There were enough persons living in the general area of White Cloud for many years to permit community functions. In 1895 it was reported that the boys at White Cloud organized a brass band in July of that year. Frequently baseball teams were organized. Henry Boyer wrote in his news from Strahan June 2, 1904, that “A large delegation went with East Sunbeam School to White Cloud for a picnic and the only accident to mar an otherwise perfect picnic was the total blindness of the umpire in the ball game, but happily he has fully recovered at this writing.”
Perhaps it was, as Mr. Paddock suggested, a tragedy play that the first railroad didn’t go to White Cloud and thus preserve a village whose environment would have enhanced any city.
