Editor’s note: Wauneta is approaching her 125th birthday in 2012 ?? with the town officially established in 1887??. The Breeze welcomes all historic information and photos of the town’s development over the last 125 years, including material relating to the years leading up to the town’s founding in the 1870s and 1880s. Information and photos can be dropped off at the Breeze office, mailed to us at P.O. Box 337 or emailed to:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The first flour mill in Wauneta was built by David Polly and Blair. The lumber was hauled from Stratton, Neb., from the Burlington Railroad Main Line in 1886. The mill was finished in 1887.

Just a short distance west of the mill was a sod house owned by a man named Rowley who was killed by the Cheyenne Indians on the North Fork of the Stinking Water Creek which also runs on land owned by Karl and Judy Polly.

The power to operate the mill was supplied by a turbine water wheel. David Polly said that, “Wauneta had the most natural power dam of any he had worked with.”

This mill burned down in 1905.

David’s wife, Minerva, died in 1892, two weeks after the birth of a son, Ed Polly. He was the father of Russel and Robert (Bob) Polly.

Other children of David and Minerva were Emma Harriet, Bertha Malleck, Clyde, Roy and H. Arthur (Art) Polly, father of Wendell and Bernard Polly.

Wendell and his wife, Eunice (Fanning), raised four sons, Kenneth, Karl, Gary and Donald Polly.

Bernard Polly’s sons were Delman and James Polly.

David raised his children in a home he built of unfinished lumber hauled from Stratton. It was a two-story, unpainted house located south of Wauneta’s north bridge on the first corner of the west side of the street. Sam McGooden later built there. After the family had grown, David married a widow, Maggie Edwards, and they moved to Pomona, Calif., where he died in 1929. He was buried beside Minerva at Wauneta’s Riverside Cemetery.

Like a good book

This brief look at Wauneta’s earliest flour mill was written this past summer as remembered by Eunice Fanning Polly Bodeman and passed along to the Breeze by local librarian Ruth Hohl who notes: “Visiting with Eunice Bodeman is like a good book — hard to get away from her stories. She is a wonderful lady.”