Information Sheet

 

 

R         Bollinger-Dolle mill and store.

92                    Records, 1867-1935.

                                    Eleven volumes and one folder.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are journals, ledgers, and miscellaneous material from the Bollinger-Dolle mill and store on the Big Whitewater River near Sedgewickville, Missouri.  The mill was built in the early 1800s and operated until the 1960s.

 

The Bollinger-Dolle mill was built sometime before 1850 by Mathias Bollinger, a brother of George Frederick Bollinger who had obtained the original Spanish land grant in the area.  The mill replaced an earlier, similar structure, also built by Mathias Bollinger, which had been de­stroyed by fire.  The mill was located above Sedgewickville, originally Smithville, on the Big Whitewater River in Bollinger County, Missouri.  Its location was unusual in that it was almost three miles from the river, to prevent damage to the machinery in high water.  The mill was powered through a tailrace from the river which diverted enough water from the river to turn the water­wheel and its later replacement, the water turbine.

 

Mathias Bollinger’s son, Moses Bollinger, inherited the mill upon his father’s death.  Moses died in 1853, and his heirs were forced to sell the mill to John B. Dolle at a sheriff’s auc­tion at the courthouse in Marble Hill.  The mill was operated by five generations of the Dolle family un­til 1936, when it was sold to Terry Bollinger, a descendant of the original owner and builder.

 

As was common for mills in rural areas, the Bollinger-Dolle mill became a center for the farming community surrounding it.  The mill complex included a store and post office, and also served as a temporary meeting place for some of the fraternal organizations which flour­ished in the area.

 

The records of the Bollinger-Dolle mill and store were loaned for microfilming by Dorothy Lee Dolle Krueger.  The collection includes ledgers, journals, and a few pieces of correspondence addressed to Anthony and John Dolle.  The volumes are standard business records which record the operations at the mill and sales through the store.  The records of the store and mill were not kept separately, and a single journal entry might include the charge for a spool of thread as well as for milling several hundred pounds of grain into flour.  The ledgers, which contain individual ac­counts by name of the customer, indicate that some pay­ments to the mill were made in kind, ei­ther in labor or goods.  Various other accounts are in­cluded in the ledgers, such as hide-buying, wool-carding, and payments to the Federal govern­ment for stamp sales through the post office.  All but one of the ledgers are indexed by name.  The journals are in chronological order.  Except for an eleven-year gap after 1876, the entire period from 1867 to 1935 is represented.

 

 

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