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After the railroad came through in 1872. John Brinkman along with Frank Reed
and others, work to get a railroad station located here. The farmers built the station and
the railroad furnished an operator. Joseph Baillargeon built a steam hoop mill for making a coil hoop on which he had a patent on section 5, Sheridan. In 1883 he moved it to section 8, where Reeman now stands. His mill employed 9 men and turned out from 7,000 to10,000 hoops a day. Later he added a saw mill and feed mill. William A Boyd built a steam saw mill at what became Reeman. It had a capacity of 12,000 feet a day. In 1883 the firm became Boyd & McQueen, In 1884 McQueen sold his interest to Frank Reed and the firm became Boyd & Reed. Boyd also sold his interest to Reed. The mill burned in 1898. John Boyd, finally went into business for himself. At one time he had 1,000,000 feet of logs in at Reed's Mill. In 1894, Frank Reed built a large flour mill on Sec. 8, Sheridan Township, near the railroad tracks. The mill had a custom trade for miles around. The settlement sprang up around the mill, and was called Reed's Mill. The same year that Reed built the flour mill, John Brinkman built the first store there. Before the depot was completed, Brinkman had a ticket office and express office in his store. With the building of the depot, Reeman soon became an important shipping point for the farmers of the area. Brinkman was finally successful, on April 9, 1897, in getting a post office established there under the name of Reeman. The name originated from a composite of the two names, Reed and Brinkman. John Brinkman was the first Postmaster, and John Geerling was the last postmaster when the office closed on June 30, 1959. the mail then went to Fremont. Reed, had a Elevator here at his mill and Brinkman also had shingle mill there. In 1872, the Boyd brothers, Charles and Samuel had a warehouse there, where they sold general produce and potatoes by the car lots. Later Joe Meyers had a Hardware Store and Jake Reimink had a General Merchandise Store and a Mill here. The telephone number at the hardware store was 358-3S-1L (the line number was 358 and three short rings and one long ring was for Hardware.) Reimink number was 242-1S-2L or one short ring and two long rings. The other telephone lines numbers for Reeman were 369 and 249. Most of these farm line would have from 10 to 20 customers and some time even more, per line. These farm phone lines were owned and maintained by the farmers on the line themselves. |