Diller #4

Diller Digest #4 – In the Beginning..Two events came together as Diller was born as a town. The Otoe Indian Reservation occupied 25 square miles of land just south of the old Oregon Trail route. Several tribes had lived there, but the Otos and the Pawnees were the main ones. They sold their land and moved to Oklahoma. That was the first happening. At about the same time, event number two occurred when a Burlington Railroad line was built in the area. A man named David Kelley said that the town was named after a “very nice old gentleman” named Samuel Diller. It was surveyed and plotted on October 1, 1880, about 80 acres of land. Mr. Diller was instrumental in bringing a group of Pennsylvania German settlers – some young marrieds and some single – 19 adults and 13 children, who came to Fairbury via the railroad and then on to Diller He loaned them money to buy the land, held school in his own home and conducted church services there as well. He gave two acres for the Prairie Home Cemetery. He died soon after the town started and may have been the first person buried there.A post office was soon established, with D.R. Kelley the postmaster in his own home. Mail was delivered by horseback from Steele City on the way to Blue Springs, arriving on Wednesday and taken on Friday each week.Other immigrants arrived and the town quickly thrived. By 1887, businesses included the following: two brickyards, hotel, drug store, meat market, two general merchandise stores, mason and plasterer, milliner, two newspapers(the Diller Record and the Jefferson County Record), two blacksmiths, livery stable, harness maker, barber, saloon, cattle and hog buyer, veterinarian, two banks, doctor, three churches(Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist), two opera houses, lumber yard, hardware store, and a farm implement store. According to the 1890 U.S. census, the population was already up to 126 and mushroomed to a peak of 506 by 1910.(Thanks to Ronald Weers of Diller for much of this information). To be continued…

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