EARLY DAYS IN MILLS COUNTY
Glenwood, Iowa
Below we print a letter from Charles Wesley Tolles, now a resident of Colorado, but an old-time Mills County pioneer, and a brother of the late H. A. Tolles of Glenwood. He passed through this county before there was a white man living here and is familiar with early day events.
Mr. Tolles should make an extra effort to be present at the Glenwood "Home Coming Week." He is past 85 years of age and can go back with reminiscences about Queen Mills a little farther than probably any man now living. Here is his letter.
Editor Tribune --
When I came to what is now Mills County, there was no one living where Glenwood is now located. There was merely an Indian trail crossing Keg Creek, and on up to the divide to Mosquito Creek. The old dragoon trail from Fort Leavenworth to Council Bluffs followed the divide, on which Sidney and Tabor are located, and thus passed through Glenwood.
I think the first man that built on the Glenwood site went by the name of Coon. William Coolidge, a disenting Mormon, built a mill where Keg Creek ran to the bluff over southeast of town. The mill attracted settlers. Coolidge started a little store, which also had an influence to bring settlers.
When there were perhaps 15 or 20 families they began to talk town, and called it Coonville. You must remember that there were no municipal of political organizations in the country at that time. The land was not yet surveyed.
In the course of time the land was surveyed. A lawyer who hailed from the state of Alabama settled in the town, and soon after there was an election held and we sent a man by the name of Sharp to the legislature. At that session the metes and bounds of what is now Mills County, were located and Coonville was christened Glenwood. At that time what is now known as Nebraska was not yet in the market. As soon as it was opened for settlement, there was a rush and a town sprang up like magic. It was laid out and called Plattsmouth. I suppose it was so called, because it was near the point where the Platte river empties into the Missouri river.
Bellevue, further north, was an old Indian trading post controlled by a French Indian trader by the name of Peter A. Sarpy. He and others started the town of St. Mary.
By the way, here hangs a story. It may not interest you, but I must tell it by way of explanation. When that part of Missouri where St. Joe is located was inhabited by Indians, a French trader by the name of Joseph Roubedoux had a trading post on the spot where St. Joseph is now located. After the Indians left, the country settled up rapidly, and after a time it was proposed to lay out a town on the site of old Joe's ranch. In looking about for a name for the new town, someone proposed calling it St. Mary, after old Joe's French wife, whose name was Mary. She lived in St. Louis, but never visited old Joe's Indian quarters. Perhaps she did not care to mix up with old Joe's numerous Indian wives. She in some way got on to their racket about the name. She protested so bitterly they gave it up and called it St. Joseph for old Joe. It may not be so, but I have thought Sarpy named their town St. Mary just to spite old Joe's wife.
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C. W. Tolles
Contributed by Deb Hascall
