Salina Post proudly presents Flashback Friday in partnership with the Smoky Hill Museum. Enjoy a weekly tidbit of local history from the staff at Salina Post and the Smoky Hill Museum as we present "Salina-Flashback Fridays."
By SALINA POST
In a state defined by wheat and agricultural production, Gypsum helped spark that identity for Kansans in 1889 with the Gypsum City Flour (Roller) Mills that jumpstarted the small town's history.
Settlers of the town initially founded Gypsum as a Templer community named Templefeld, but in 1886, the community was renamed Gypsum Creek.
The Gypsum City Flour Mills became a prominent feature of the town, and in 1919, William and Bernhardt Teichgraeber purchased the mill and renamed it to Teichgraeber Milling Company.
William and Bernhardt Teichgraeber moved to the United States in 1880 from Saxony, Germany, and began a grain mill business across Central Kansas. The two brothers eventually had mills in Emporia alongside their initial Gypsum operations.
According to the Smoky Hill Museum, the mill produced several types of flour and a line of hot cereals named Glory Breakfast Cereal and Glory Cream Farina to support American troops battling in World War I.
From there, Glory Cereals became a staple of the mill. During World War II, six women wearing matching red and blue uniforms traveled across Kansas in a van to distribute samples of Glory Cereal door-to-door.
The group was named the Glory Girls, and their notoriety spread to neighboring states like Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa where they continued to sell Teichgraeber Milling's products.
A quote from Janet Teichgraeber Buchanan recalls how her mother, Mildred Teichgraeber, began the Glory Girls.
"Mom selected and trained six attractive girls who had graduated from high school or were in college," Mildred Teichgraeber said. "She dressed each of them in a snappy blue slack suit with a fitted waist-length jacket trimmed with gold buttons... Each had a brimmed hat, dark blue with gold trim, worn at a saucy tilt. The six Glory Girls would travel to various cities around the state in a bright red van with the word 'Glory' on the two front doors."
Eventually, cold cereals outgrew hot cereal's popularity on the national market, so Teichgraeber Milling created a new cereal called Puffed O'Wheat.
Workers at the mill made the cereal by funneling wheat into a rotating barrel that heated the kernels until they exploded and shot into a bin. The mill constructed an additional building for this process.
The mill would make Puffed O'Wheat every morning at 11:30 a.m., so the aroma of warm wheat cereal bathed Gypsum and alerted residents that it was time for lunch.
The Teichgraeber industry left Gypsum in the 20th Century, and the mill was later torn down at an unknown time in the mid-20th Century. The town once housed more than 700 residents during the 1920s, but today, about 400 Kansans call the small community home.