Lynn Ochiltree is the de-facto town historian for Wilton, Iowa.
Co-owner of the iconic Wilton Candy Kitchen downtown (with his wife Brenda), he is thrilled to be part of a family that’s been recognized by the state for owning both a Century Farm and Heritage Farm.
The 127-acre Muscatine County farm – on Highway 927 in Wilton – was founded in 1866, and Lynn Ochiltree is the sixth generation that’s co-owned it. The farm has been eligible for Century Farms since 1966, it’s now eight years past the Heritage eligibility, and it earned both. The family never applied for it before.
The Wilton farm started with Anton Feltman, a German immigrant from Bavaria. In 1854, he and his family came to the U.S., through New Orleans, up the Mississippi River. They first settled in Muscatine, and straight up north of Wilton, to move in with the William Brammeier family, related somehow.
“We think he was related – cousins, or brother-in-law, an uncle or nephew, we’re not sure,” Lynn said. “We were surprised. This reference has always been in our family, which was documented in the ‘30s. But it’s interesting we never really had anybody in the family ever say the Brammeier family was related.”
Wilton became incorporated as a town in 1855, with the railroad just coming through.
Anton was hired to work on the railroad, and the farm included the Mississippi-Missouri Railroad camp, where they had supplies and an encampment for workers, Lynn said.
Feltman didn’t come to own it until 1866. The farm passed to his son, Gotlieb, who then sold it to his nephew Garold in 1945. Garold Ochiltree’s parents were Minnie and Homer Ochiltree.
Nancy Feltman was Gotlieb’s sister and she married Christian Jasperson. Their daughter was Minnie (Wilhelmina).
“A lot of these properties were given to Civil War soldiers, encouraging them to come west to settle,” Lynn said. The Feltman family had moved across the river from Muscatine into Illinois before settling in Wilton.
“He worked for the railroad and he found out he couldn’t get paid, for whatever reason,” Lynn said, noting he ended up getting paid, to buy 40 acres in Illinois.
The family moved two miles east of Wilton, where Gotlieb was born. Originally, the farm was 240 acres, and the Ochiltrees ended up acquiring 160 acres in 1945, south of the railroad tracks.
Garold was Leo Ochiltree’s father. The farm produced corn, soybeans, cattle and hogs. Leo (Lynn’s father) worked on the farm all his life (now 127 acres), from the time he was 10. Now it’s farmed (corn and beans) by Leo’s nephew Rodney Ochiltree.
They tore a house on the farm down in 1963. Lynn Ochiltree and his family moved into a house they built in 2009, after using beams from a former barn. He grew up in a Taylor Avenue home where his parents still live. No family member has lived on the farm since Leo’s brother Jerry and his wife in 1962.
“We had family friends, relatives stay,” Leo said. “Way down on the creek bottom, dad would plow along the creek bottom, and there were all the old stories about the Indians that used to stay up on the hill. We picked up arrowheads like you wouldn’t believe out of the bottom, and we’d plow it.”
“For us kids, that was a big deal, while dad was out there plowing,” he added.
The Wilton Fairgrounds (which operated until about 1917) had a building moved to their farm, and Leo baled hay in it. “We fed cattle out of it, shoveled manure out of it, for years. It was a big building.”
There’s no original buildings, other than a silo, remaining on the farm.
Lynn wanted to build a house there to save the 1880s-era barn. “I feel bad that we tore it down on some level, but I feel proud that we saved it, because it’ll have another hundred years of use the way we saved it.”
In the 1950s, Leo’s dad and some other guys went to the Oscar Mayer plant in Davenport and tore down some vacant buildings. All that steel was brought to their Wilton farm to save the barn from rotting.
“It was in excellent shape when we took it down, because that steel saved it,” Leo said. “Dad had a good friend who worked there who said, ‘We’re tearing a building down, you wanna come get it? The steel from the Oscar Mayer building saved the barn.”
“It would have been great to save it as it was, but it wasn’t really worth it,” Lynn said. “We saved all the post beams and one side of the barn had a lean-to on the south, and that those barn boards on the south side almost had never been exposed to the weather. We saved all that side of the barn, and put that entire wall of boards in our house, in the entryway when you walk in.”
“It was really special to know we’ve given the barn a new life,” he added. “It’s fun when dad goes in and he remembers using the barn. We had pigs there growing up.”
Lynn (who has a younger sister, Lisha) recalls that as “the other place.”
“I was real meticulous – I wanted the beams from the barn put back together exactly how they were taken down. So the barn sits exactly the way it sat, except a few 30 or 40 feet to the north. Part of the house is all the original flooring from the barn, so we saved certain pieces.”
Leo recalled some time in the ‘50s, there was a huge beehive in the barn. There’s still marks from the hive on one of the beams in Lynn’s house. “It’s been cleaned, but yeah, it’s still there.”
“My favorite memory – I just loved exploring the old buildings that were there, going up into the barn,” Lynn said. “We scooped a lot of manure, and that wasn’t fun. I’ve been in the silo. We didn’t spend a ton of time over there.”
Leo and Jerry worked on farming it.
When the family acquired it in 2017 from Leo’s parents’ estate, they cleaned up several fence rows and other areas. “It really didn’t have any tender loving care until then,” Lois said. “We really gave it a new facelift.”
Lynn and his wife Brenda named their son Christian (not after Jasperson), after Christian Marolf, the first settler of Wilton in 1849.
“I love Wilton and I love history,” Lynn said. Christian Ochiltree, who’s 15, is seven generations removed from Marolf.
They’ve owned the Wilton Candy Kitchen since 2015. The business began in 1860, in the building that dates from 1856. The first soda fountain wasinstalled in 1882.
Lynn, 56, is considered the town’s historian. “I’ve loved these stories since Minnie Ochiltree told me about Anton Feltman when I was little.”
“I didn’t realize how far these things went back until I got older,” he said. He’s hoping to make it to the 200th anniversary of the family farm and the Candy Kitchen building.
The Nopoulos family operated the Candy Kitchen from 1910 until the Ochiltrees bought it.
The family was honored to earn the state designation for their Heritage Farm.
“We had everybody there but my son-in-law,” Lynn’s mother Lois said, noting nine family members attended.
“It was really cool; it was a long day,” Lynn said. “We saw a lot of people we knew.”