This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Borchers, Bourne, Travis, Jenkins, Gray Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/1610 Message Board Post: THE SIDNEY ARGUS - HERALD. October 9, 1930.--"Landmarks Are Passing".--The old order changeth--old things give way to new--and old landmarks are being torn down to be replaced by new modern business structures. Such is the case here. Two of the oldest known houses in Sidney are now in the process of demolition. These houses, that have stood witness to all things passing along the east side of the square since the "town first was" have been torn down in order to make room for the new Skelly Oil company station, construction of which was started this week. From Mrs. T.R. Travis we are aable to glean a little history in connection with these two landmarks. H. G. Bourne buit the house on the corner in 1850. It was started in the cummer and ompleted just in time for the family to have their Christmas dinner in the new home. Mrs. Bourne held a light for the carpenters to work by after night in order that this might be possible. Mr. Bourne was tresurer of Fremont county from 1855 to 1857. Mrs. Bourne was a sister of Mrs. Augustus Borchers whose huysxband laid out the town of Hamburg in 1857. A daughter, Mary L. Bourne, who is living at Rushville, Nebraska, is 81 years of age. From her we are also able to obtain some information about these old monuments to pioneer days. The south house, commonly known as the Borchers house, was built two years after the Bourne house, in 1852. The frame lumber and the oak floors for both houses were sawed at a little mill where, sometime afterward, the Jenkins grist mill was located. All of the floor boards were planed by hand. The weather boarding and finishing lumber were shipped to what is now Nebraska City, by boat. In the summer of the year the Borchers house was finished, the Missouri river was "on a rise" and the lumber was brought across the bottomland in skiffs of flatboats. James Gray, who was county treasurer here from 1871 to 1876, lived in the Borchers house with his family for many years, moving away from it forty-eight years ago.