Getting lost down a rabbit hole of history can be very easy around the Barry County Museum.
With the combination of resources from the Fields’ Photo Archives and genealogy material in our reference room, combined with modern electric resources on the internet, looking up information on one subject can quickly detour into unexpected avenues.
While looking for information on the Farmer’s Hotel on Water Street (7th Street) in Cassville, I came across a newspaper clipping from 1917 in Cassville that stated, “The Boys Basketball Team has rented the Gramlich hall for the season and will begin practicing soon.” Being unfamiliar with anyone named Gramlich in Barry County, I was naturally curious to figure out who were the Gramlichs and where this Gramlich hall was located.
Reason dictated that the Gramlich hall was likely one of the old buildings around the Cassville Square since these were the only buildings large enough to accommodate a basketball game in 1917. The Community Building, later Hall Theater, wasn’t built until 1928, so that was out. The Barry Hotel wouldn’t be situated to hold basketball games with all the hotel rooms, so it couldn’t be there.
I knew from an old Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Cassville from 1914 that the “Opera House” was located on the second floor of the Horine furniture building, later known as the Otasco building during the 1960s and 70s, making it a possibility. A search found other events held at the Gramlich hall included the Cassville School Carnival in 1917 with “dancing, dwarfs, curiosities, good things to eat and last of all a real minstrel show.”
The article went on to say that the booths would be at the Gramlich hall while the minstrel show would be held at the Opera House, so that meant the Grimlich hall and the Opera House were two different locations. Further, an advertisement from 1926 for Roller & McCary listed the store location as “In the Gramlich Building, southeast of square Cassville, Mo.”
Another ad from 1917 listed “R.H. Barber, The Baker, Cassville, Mo, in the Gramlich Block.” An ad the following year listed the bakery in the Galloway building on the southeast corner of square. So, I suspected that the Grimlich building was sometimes referred to as the Galloway building. Sure enough, I found a 1914 article that stated, “A.L. Galloway closed a deal Thursday of last week in which he became the owner of the John Gramlich building and café and bakery business. In the deal John Gramlich gets 120 acres of land near the Forest Grove school house.”
An article from 1917 also detailed that “Don Ault, George Sherwood and Maurice Funk won respectively the first, second and third prizes awarded in the bird box contest held at the Galloway building opposite the post office Saturday.”
Now I just had to remember where the Cassville post office was located in 1917. The current location of the Cassville post office was built by the W.P.A. in 1938-39. Previous to that, it was located in the Community Building in 1928. Before the Community Building (Hall Theater) location, the post office was located in the building currently occupied by the Cassville Democrat newspaper.
That means the Gramlich building would be where Stumpff’s barber shop was located on Main Street. If you look up at the top of the building, there’s even a marker that says “Gramlich 1914.”
I guess I could have saved myself some time if I just looked up every once in a while. Here I thought I’d never seen the name Gramlich, when it turns out I have passed it a few times every day on Main Street in Cassville for years.
It seems odd that John Gramlich would get rid of the building that bears his name the same year it was built and give up his trade to try his hand at farming, but maybe he just had itchy feet. Or maybe it was the influence of Mrs. Gramlich.
A wedding announcement in 1912 Cassville paper relates that “John Gramlich our new baker hied off to Monett Saturday night and on Sunday morning met Miss Hazel McDill of Willow Springs, Howell County, and were married.”
By 1917 the couple were living in Thayer, Mo, and by 1920 they lived in Springfield. His obituary from 1954 states that he ran a bakery in Chillicothe, Mo in the 1930s, and Kansas City in the 1940s.
While the baker John Gramlich only spent a few years in Cassville, he made a mark that has lasted more than a century, if you know where to look.
Jeremiah Buntin is a historian at the Barry County Museum. He may be reached at jbuntin@barrycomuseum.
org.
