Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

Kim did a good job of covering the Kriechbaum murder in the January 5 issue. I would like to add what I know about it from a personal point of view.

William M. Dunn was sheriff in the year 1898. That was also the year the new jail was built in Bloomington. The jail still stands strong in the park. It is constructed of rock and has a metal roof. Sometimes in the summer, its door hangs open for anyone to enter. Inside, a person can still view the cells that held the wrong doers of Franklin County. The people of the community maintain the jail well, preserving it for the future.

William Dunn owned and ran a store on the Main Street of Bloomington. That building still stands too. He was the local auctioneer. He first located on a farm south of Pleasant View Church in Ash Grove. That house still stood until a few years ago (a story for another day). This man who saw a million miles was responsible for numerous inhabitants of our county today. He was the great-grandfather of my husband, Duane, and Charles Dunn's grandfather.

Charles Dunn gave me an account of the famous Kriechbaum murder that had been passed on to him from his dad, Hiram Dunn.

Sheriff William Dunn, assisted by his Deputy Paul Amman, traveled out to the Tooman house and quietly approached the front and threw open the door. Seeing that one of the men (Tooman or Cole) had started up the staircase to a loft area, Sheriff Dunn firmly told him to halt. He stopped half way up the stairs. If he hadn't stopped, Sheriff Dunn said it could have been a bad situation, for in the upstairs of that home they found guns and ammo and lots of it.

This Tooman house sat just across the creek from our farm here on Cottonwood Creek (farmers township, section 25, the south east ¼, the 80 acres to the west of our 80). On my old first map of Franklin County, Amanda Tooman owned these 80 acres.

It's the same old Fenton and Milo Hill house I wrote about in the Hill interview. The house, as I said, has only a few boards left to deteriorate, and then we won't know where it was. The cellar is still visible in the bank of the hill, behind the house. The area is overgrown and shaded by trees. When I first came to the creek over 20 years ago, some of the walls were still standing. The above picture is of the Milo Hill house across the creek from us.

The people in the picture are the Bixbys, who lived in the house before the Hills (a story for another day). The Bixbys lived in this house in 1914.

I wonder what our ancestors, Sheriff William Dunn, thought on his ride west from Bloomington to the Tooman house. It was his job to uphold the law of the county and included jeopardizing his life for the people, so they could live in peace. I am sure he felt sad for the family of Jesse Tooman and for the family of Kriechbaum. This was his job to do.

From the courthouse records, I find Jesse Tooman sold his 80 acres to Amanda (his wife) for $1.00 in June of 1899. Amanda took a mortgage on this land from J. P. A. Black. (Black worked in a bank in Bloomington) on December 2, 1903. Amanda Tooman (single)? Sold this land to W. L. Butler February 25, 1904. More questions? Where did she go, and What does the "single" mean. If they were divorced it wasn't in Franklin County, and if W. S. Cole and Tooman's daughter were married it wasn't in Franklin County.

This tragedy took place in 1898. Seven years later, in 1905, a W. L. Butler owned this house and 80 acres. The Bixbys are in that house nine years after that, and I have a folder on their lives. I wonder if they knew the history of that home. It's a matter of people in and out of that house, and each with a story to tell.

"We spend our years as a tale that is told."

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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