One lark the teens of yesteryear would occasional indulge in was cross-dressing for fun. While usually reserved for Halloween and other parties, that wasn't always the case. Click an image to open it in Flickr. Many persons in the pictures... Continue Reading →
We think of Bremen as a sleepy Midwestern town, but in the days before 1900, it could be as wild as any western town. Take the incident in April of 1896, when the call came to apprehend a gang of... Continue Reading →
In 1899, horseless carriages were the talk of the town. Studebaker ordered one from the Winton company and soon announced they would add horseless carriages to their carriage offerings. There was general disagreement over whether such contraptions would amount to... Continue Reading →
In 2014, Kent Koontz gave a talk at the history center on the history of Koontz Hardware store, sold in 2017 to the Jones family and called Yoder Hardware. https://youtu.be/ZYJPHNPpqgk
Before the town of Bremen had a proper library (which was established in the town hall in the 1920s before a proper library building was built in the 1950s), it had the People's Circulating Library, run by the Koontz brothers,... Continue Reading →
The Marshall County Independent reported on a mysterious French woman found by the railroad tracks at Bremen back in September of 1898—118 years ago this week. Click the image to display a larger version. The Enquirer itself had a little... Continue Reading →
This year, the Koontz family sold Koontz Hardware to Yoder Hardware of Shipshewana. In 2014, Kent Koontz gave a History Chat explaining the founding and history of the store that means so much to his family and residents of Bremen.... Continue Reading →
Woodie Schramm came to Bremen from Warsaw in 1944 and bought the Home Cash Grocery from Lester Koontz. In 2014, Woodie's son Charles gave a History Chat talk at the Bremen History Center on the history of the business and... Continue Reading →
Although Bremen was first surveyed and platted in 1851, the beginning of the town is often dated to 1871, when it was incorporated. What was it like back then? In 1870, the census of Bremen covered just three pages: 120... Continue Reading →
This writer had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with Calvin Koontz of the Plymouth area recently, during which we pored over four photo albums donated to the History Center a few years ago. Those albums had been partially scanned... Continue Reading →
Historic Bremen 