Floods have taken two lives over the years. In 1929, David C. Gallagher was helping neighbors drive horses to higher ground when Sugar Creek flood waters swept him away. This flood resulted in damage to 50,000 acres in Logan County, as well as damage to roads, bridges and railroad tracks.

Patricia Rankin, 14, drowned in a flood of Salt Creek in 1956. She and family members had gone to look for fish along the swollen creek.

A happier outcome occurred in 1982, when a flash flood of Sugar Creek swept a car driven by E.W. Bloomquist into the water. However, four young men came to the rescue and found an ingenious way to reach Bloomquist and haul him out of the strong currents.

Fires destroyed property and took the life of one resident, Mrs. Anna Korfhage. The most spectacular blaze occurred when 50,000 gallons of fuel in the Illico Independent Oil Company’s bulk plant exploded in 1937.

Pictures and more information on these and other natural disasters can be found in the "New Holland Pictorial History: 1875 – 2000."

During World War II club members sent homemade clothing and baked goods to servicemen at Chanute Air Force Base; donated to Goodwill, Yanks Who Gave, and Dimes for Liberty; and encouraged people to buy Victory Bonds.

The club hemmed diapers for the Baby Fold in Bloomington, donated to the Salvation Army, and sent Easter baskets to Dwight Veterans Hospital and Christmas baskets to the needy.

The women also sponsored programs and musical numbers, debates, plays, and education reports relating to current issues. In 1950 they sponsored the Girl Scouts; in 1970 they endorsed the Logan County Health Department; and in 1975 they took part in the New Holland Centennial Festivities.

Authors of the new book on the history of New Holland say, "As we think back to a town of muddy streets, wooden sidewalks, limited transportation and no indoor plumbing, we commend the ladies for caring about intellectual, cultural and social progress."

Pictures and more about the Woman’s Club and other organizations can be found in the "New Holland Pictorial History: 1875 – 2000."

The first public township school was built in New Holland in 1876, financed by taxes from each township. Because of increased enrollment, a large two-story brick school was built on the north end of Mason Street in 1901. It cost $10,000. Rural farm children, however, were still educated in one-room country schools, with one teacher for all eight grades.

In 1913 a three-year high school was opened, with classes in one of the upstairs rooms of the grade school building. In 1920 the community voted for a four-year high school. For several years it was in the upper level of a downtown building. Basketball games were played in the Methodist Church basement, while plays and operettas were presented in the Presbyterian Church. In 1931, a fire destroyed the building, but many school records, books and typewriters were saved by the townspeople.

Pictures of schools old and new and many of the classes can be found in "New Holland Pictorial History: 1875 - 2000."

The celebration officially opens at 5 p.m. Friday, when historical displays, a carnival and bingo games open. The historical displays, on view throughout the celebration, will be housed in three locations on West Lincoln Street in downtown New Holland. The carnival will be located on East Lincoln Street.

From 5 to 6:30 p.m. a food vendor from Mason City will serve two selections of grilled sandwiches. Other food vendors will also be on hand Friday evening and Saturday to sell ice cream selections, walleye sandwiches, hamburgers and french fries, and traditional carnival food such as corn dogs and elephant ears. Opening ceremonies will be at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the West Stage, followed by the New Salem Country Opry at 7 p.m.

On Saturday the local 4-H group will serve a pancake and sausage breakfast from 7 to 10 a.m. A 5K run begins at 8 a.m. All-day events include craft and flea market sales, historical displays, a quilt show at the United Methodist Church, and a display of antique cars and farm machinery featuring the collection of New Holland resident Irwin Conklen.

Entertainment for the children will start at 9:30 a.m., when the Girl Scouts sponsor children's games on West Lincoln. Quacky the Clown will join the fun at 10:30, and the Lincoln Bible Church will put on a puppet show at 11 a.m. A pedal tractor pull is set for noon.

At 10:30 a.m. there will be a tree and flag dedication. The parade, which will include bands, fire trucks, floats, antique cars and more, steps off at 2 p.m. at Page Street and Route 10 and winds through town.

Quickie the Clown returns to the West Stage with a magic show at 3:30, followed by a banjo band at 4 p.m. Hot air balloon demonstrations will be at 4 p.m., and balloons will lift off if weather permits.

Grilled sandwiches will be served again from 4:30 to 6:30. The Sidekicks line dancers will be on the West Stage at 5 p.m.; winners of the talent show will perform at 5:30; the Mason City Area Singers will be on at 6; and at 7 p.m. Kent Sorrells, "Everybody's Favorite Hypnotist," will entertain.

On the East Stage the City Limits Band is scheduled from 8 to 11 p.m.. A balloon glow and a 4-H cakewalk are also on the evening program.

Sunday morning the Methodist and Lutheran churches will have services at 9 a.m., and a community church service with choirs will be at 10:30. No commercial food vendors will be at the Sunday celebration, but a potluck dinner at which everyone is welcome will be at noon. The celebration will close with an auction of donated items at the East Stage at 1:30 p.m.

The 176-page volume will be available by the time the village celebrates its Quasquicentennial (125th anniversary) on the weekend of Sept. 29 and 30 and Oct. 1. The book is organized into nine sections: early years, municipal development, businesses, agriculture, churches and cemeteries, education, organizations, natural disasters, and nostalgia.

A highlight of the book is its 454 pictures, which cover every area of the town’s history from an 1873 plat of Sheridan township to recent aerial photes taken from balloons. The education section is thick with school pictures reaching back many years. There are pictures of New Holland’s downtown in the early 1900s, when it was a bustling retail center. There is even a picture of the explosion of the bulk gas plant in the 1930s.

The considerable labor needed to produce this attractive, informative and accurate history came from a committee of eight New Holland area women. Joanne Hawes, Lila Conklen, Phyllis Blaum, Mildred Struebing, Adrienne Chesnut, Pat La Forge, Judy Funderburg and Barbara Semple have put in many, many hours of research and writing and sent out many, many pleas to community residents for pictures and information.

"We’ve been working together on it three days a week, as well as each of us working separately, since the first of the year," Barbara Semple said.

The idea began to germinate in 1975, when the village celebrated its centennial. "We had a slide presentation at the Centennial," Hawes remembers. "People collected a lot of pictures and we put them on slides. We showed the slides at the centennial and then they were stored in the bank. We had 175 slides, and the people at the bank suggested we use them somehow for the 125th anniversary."

The first idea was to make a video of the slides, Hawes said. Then somebody saw Paul Gleason’s book, "Lincoln: A Pictorial History," and the idea jelled. "We should put these in a book."

[Joan Crabb]

[Donald Miller, ag teacher at New Holland-Middletown High School for 28 years, displays plaque naming him an Honorary American Farmer by the National FFA Association in 1988. This is one of the highest awards given to an adult by the FFA.]

He will be one of many area residents with ties to New Holland who will be attending the village’s 125th anniversary celebration the weekend of Sept. 29 and 30 and Oct. 1.

Miller grew up on a farm near Burtonview and went to grades one through seven there at Burtonview Grade School, then a one-room school. The school had from 16 to 18 students and one teacher. The teacher had to do all the work, fire the furnace, clean up the building and teach all eight grades, he recalls.

"By the time you got to the fifth or sixth grade, you knew everything, because you had to listen to all the other classes recite," he says. The one-room school didn’t even have indoor plumbing; the students had to go outdoors and use old-fashioned outhouses, he recalls.

He went to eighth grade at New Holland Grade School, then on to New Holland Community High School. "There were about 60 kids in high school in my time. We had one English teacher, one history teacher, a coach who taught math and physics, a math teacher, a typing and business teacher, an ag teacher who also taught science, a home economics teacher, and the principal, who also taught history and civics." When he graduated from New Holland High School in 1955, there were 18 in his class, one of the larger classes in the school.

"The class of 1955 has had a class reunion every year since we graduated," he says. "About eight or 10 of us come. I think we’re the only class that meets every year."

What he learned in a one-room rural school and a small-town high school was good enough to get him into the University of Illinois, where he had to take examinations for three days straight before he was accepted. He graduated with a master’s degree in agriculture.

"I believe there are advantages to small schools," he says. "To say the little schools are not doing a good job is just not true."

The principal at New Holland died in the spring of 1960, when Miller was completing his work at Illinois. "The ag teacher took over as principal, and then they needed an ag teacher. They thought of me, and I started teaching in the fall of 1960."

In 1961 New Holland consolidated with Middletown High School, and students from both towns came to the high school in New Holland. That school had been built in 1931, after a fire destroyed the downtown building where high school classes had been before. The new building was dedicated in January of 1932. It originally had six classrooms, but in1955 an addition was built, giving it a farm shop, music room and bus garage.

In 1973 a new elementary school building was completed near the high school, and students walked over there for science classes, band and chorus, and lunch at the new cafeteria, Miller remembers.

In its heyday, the New Holland-Middletown High School had from 125 to 130 students, and Miller taught "some pretty good-sized ag classes. We were active in FFA and in judging ag contests in Section 14 of the state. We had about 12 different schools competing. This included schools in Logan, Sangamon and Menard counties, along with one school from Cass County.

"We always entered the judging contests, grain, beef, swine, sheep and land use judging. We usually won about two contests a year, and once we won the land use judging contest 18 years in a row."

It wasn’t an easy contest. A backhoe would dig a hole in the ground six feet deep, and the students had to get down in the hole, study the soil, make a soil profile and then map out a management plan for the land.

"Even when I started teaching I knew of lot of my students wouldn’t be farming," Miller continues. "But most of them would be involved in ag in some way, maybe as an implement dealer or a seed corn dealer. An ag background in high school could help them get good jobs."

In 1988 New Holland-Middletown consolidated with Lincoln Community High School, and Miller went along to teach ag and some science classes. He retired in 1995 and lives in Lincoln.

"I really enjoyed it," he says of his teaching career. "The kids were great kids. I still see some of them and they still call me "Mr. Miller."

"I say, ‘It’s Don now,’ but they say, "No, it’s always Mr. Miller.’"