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THE TOWN OF LANCASTER
The Government survey of the the land upon which Lincoln is now located was made
in the year 1856 and, of course, the feature of the survey was the report made
upon the salt springs. The stories of fabulous wealth spread to all parts of the
Middle West, and for that matter, into the East. Many an adventurer and pioneer
trekked to Nebraska Territory, fully expecting to return to his eastern home
with pockets bulging. In 1856 the Crescent Company was organized at Plattsmouth,
Neb., and Capt. W. T. Donovan, then commander of the steamer Emma, running from
Pittsburgh to Plattsmouth, was appointed to represent the company at the newly
discovered salt basin. Donovan, accompanied by his family, came and settled on
section 23, on the west bank of Salt Creek, just south of the mouth of Oak
Creek. During the same summer William Norman and Alexander Robinson,
representing another company, came and located on section 21, near the salt
basin, but in the next spring they left, dissatisfied with the outlook. As
stated before, the attitude of the Pawnee Indians became very threatening during
1858 and Captain Donovan himself left the new settlement and retired to the
Stevens Creek colony for safety. In 1861 he returned and settled in the vicinity
of the salt basin once more, at a point near the present state hospital, then
called Yankee Hill.
In the autumn of 1859 a meeting had been held to consider county organization
and a committee, composed of A. J. Wallingford, Joseph J. Forest and W. T.
Donovan, were appointed to select a site for a county seat and there lay out a
town. In accordance with their instructions the men selected the site of
Lincoln, and called it Lancaster. It is said that Donovan gave the name. He had
previously, in 1857, named his first settlement at the basin Lancaster.
On July 2, 1861, Captain Donovan introduced Mr. W. W. Cox to the basin and the
latter, in company with Darwin Peckham, began to boil salt on August 20th in
section 21. During the winter, when the business of trading salt was at a
standstill, Cox quartered with Donovan at Yankee Hill.
During the year 1862 John S. Gregory arrived at the basin and also opened up a
salt business on section 21. In the latter part of the month of May Milton
Langdon and his family arrived and settled on the north side of Oak Creek, near
its junction with Salt Creek.
The passage of the Homestead Act in February, 1862, brought many new settlers
into this county, where they took up their claims, some of them staying and
others moving on after a few months.
In the fall of 1861 the first frame building in Lancaster County was begun and
finished during the following spring. W. W. Cox, by trade a carpenter, did the
construction work for Richard Wallingford. The doors were of hlack walnut.
During the winter of 1862-63 the family of Joseph Chambers was presented with a
son, which child was probably the first born within the limits of the present
City of Lincoln. The child lived only a short time.
In the spring of 1863 John S. Gregory constructed a small frame house, in the
vicinity of the present West Lincoln, and about the same time was made
postmaster at the basin; the office was called Gregory's Basin. Mr. Gregory
engaged in the making of salt, along with William Imlay and Milton Langdon. Mr.
Gregory was elected to the Territorial Legislature for Lancaster County on
October 13, 1863.
On July 4, 1863, the little settlement at the salt basin was augmented by
several newcomers. Tradition has it that Mr. W. W. Cox, while picking
gooseberries along Salt Creek for the Fourth of July dinner, heard men shouting
to him. Upon closer inspection he found that the new arrivals, namely, J. M.
Young, Peter Schamp, Dr. J. McKesson, E. W. Warnes, Luke Lavender and Jacob
Dawson, were seeking a place to locate and plant a colony. The party accepted
Mr. Cox's invitation to join in patriotic exercises and during the day Elder
Young and his associates became impressed with the possibilities of the -salt
basin site. Young returned to the basin on July 10, 1863, and located on section
23, a part of which he designated as a town and named it Lancaster. No effort
was made to encourage settlement in the town until the next year, 1864, and this
date may properly be said to have been the starting point of the village of
Lancaster, later to blossom into the state capital of Nebraska.
Upon the occasion of Elder Young's death on Saturday, February 23, 1884, or
shortly afterward, the Nebraska State Journal had the following to say of him:
"It is seldom that the Journal is called upon to chronicle the death of a man
who. living, had so many claims to the love and respect of his fellow men, and
who, dead, leaves so great a lesson of faith and works behind him, or is so
sincerely mourned, as Elder J. M. Young, who has at last, after seventy-eight
years of labor in his Master's vineyard, gone to receive the reward of his
faithful toil.
"Up to within a year Elder Young had been quite vigorous and active,
notwithstanding his burden of years. For the last year he had been suffering
from bronchial aftections, and for about two months was confined to his bed.
"Elder J. M. Young was born in Genesee Coimty, N. Y., near Batavia. on the
old Holland purchase, November 25, 1806. In 1829 hs married Alice Watson, at
that time eighteen years of age, who now survives him at the age of
seventy-four. The following year he moved to Ohio, and from Ohio he went to Page
County. Iowa, in 1859. In 1860 he came to Nebraska and settled at Nebraska City.
In 1863, near the end of the year, he came to Salt Creek, and selected as a site
for a town and what he predicted would lie the capital of Nebraska, the present
site of Lincoln. The following named persons located here at the same time:
Thomas Hudson, Edwin Warnes, Doctor McKesson, T. S. Schamp, Uncle Jonathan Ball,
Luke Lavender, Jacob Dawson and John Giles. It was the original intention to
make the settlement a church colony, but the idea was never utilized as
projected.
"On eighty acres owned by him Elder Young laid out the Town of Lancaster,
which was made the county seat. He gave the lots in the city away, half to the
county and school district, and half to the Lancaster Seminary, a school which
he hoped to see established here for the promulgation of his faith. He built
from the proceeds of the sale of some of the lots a building, which was called
the seminary, and which was occupied by the district school and church. It was
burned in 1867 and was never rebuilt.
"A church was organized here and Mr. Schamp was the first pastor. Elder Young
was then president of the Iowa and Nebraska Conference. The next year after the
capital was located the stone church was built. Elder Young's dream was to build
up a strong church in the capital city. He worked assiduously for the object,
and put into the work some eight or ten thousand dollars of his private means.
When the church went down and he saw that his dream, in so far, had been in vain
— that his dream could never be realized — he was almost broken-hearted; and
this was the chief cause of his departure from Lincoln, which took place in
1882, when he went to London, Nemaha County, the scene of
his closing days.
"Elder Young began his labors as minister soon after he moved to Ohio, in 1829.
He was president of the Ohio Annual Conference for several years and was
president of the Iowa and Nebraska Conference for about twenty years. He was a
man of rare vigor and fine attainments.
"Elder Young left four sons: John M., of Lincoln; James O., of London; Levi,
Lancaster County; and George W., of Taos City, New Mexico. He was buried in
Wyuka Cemetery on February 26, 1884. Elder Hudson conducted the funeral
services, by request of the deceased, assisted by Rev. D. Kinney and W. T.
Horn."
The southeast quarter and the east half of the southwest quarter of section 23
were platted by Jacob Dawson, dated August 6, 1864. The streets were named
North, Nebraska, Saline, Washington, Main, Lincoln, College, High and Locust
from north to south. From west to east they were numbered from one to twelve.
The original plat contained sixty-four blocks, of eight lots each. The streets
were to be sixty-six feet wide; the alleys were to run east and west and be
twenty feet wide. Upon the plat was a courthouse square and a seminary square.
In 1864 the Lancaster colony was increased by the location on or in close
proximity to the site of a dozen more settlers. Up to that time Dr. J. McKesson,
Elder Young, Luke Lavender, E. W. Warnes, J. M. Riddle, J. and D. Bennett,
Philip Humerick, E. T. Hudson, C. Aiken, Robert Monteith and his two sons, John
and William, William and John Grey, O. F. Bridges, Cyrus Carter, P. Billows, W.
Porter, Milton Langdon and three or four others were the settlers here. In 1864
Silas Pratt, the Crawfords, Mrs. White and daughter, C. C. White and John Moore
located on Oak Creek, about twelve miles northeast of this Lancaster settlement.
The Indian scare of 1864 caused many of the Lancaster citizens to hastily pack
their belongings and start for the Missouri River, but some of them stayed,
among the latter being Captain Donovan, who had once before fled for a like
cause, John S. Gregory and E. W. Warnes. The Indians committed no depredations
in this vicinity.
The year of 1865 was one of little settlement, due in no small measure to the
Indian troubles of the previous year.
The county seat fight of 1864 is related elsewhere in this volume.
The second hotel was opened by John Cadman on the site of the old seminary and
schoolhouse which stood on the rear of the lot occupied by the present State
Journal Building. The hostelry was opened to the public late in 1867. Prior to
this there had been a hotel known as the Pioneer House on the southeast corner
of Ninth and Q streets. It was managed by L. A. Scoggin. The Pioneer was
constructed in 1867 and burned down a few years later.
The afternoon of July 29, 1867, is a notable date in the history of Lancaster
County. Upon this day the little hamlet of Lancaster was selected by the
commissioners, Butler, Gillespie and Kennard, as the site of the capital of
Nebraska. Lancaster then did not contain more than ten small houses, some of
logs and some of stone. The commissioners met in the home of Captain Donovan,
which stood near the southwest corner of Ninth and O streets. This was a small
stone and Cottonwood house. Jacob Dawson's home was on the south side of O
Street, between Seventh and Eighth, and in the front part of this house S. B.
Pound had opened a small grocery store. Dawson was the postmaster at this time
also. Milton Langdon resided in a small log house near the southwest comer of
Eighth and Q streets. Dr. John McKesson had his home on the north side, near
what is now W and Twelfth streets. S. B. Galey, who had come to the town in
April, 1866, had a small stone building on P Street, near Tenth. Linderman &
Hardenbergh, who were among the earliest merchants, sold a small stock of
merchandise at a point now on Ninth Street, near P. They sold their shop to
Martin and Jacob Pflug early in 1867 and it then was operated under the firm
name of Pflug Brothers. Robert Monteith and his son, John, had a small shoe shop
at what is now 922 P Street. Elder Young lived on what is now O Street near
Seventeenth. The stone house erected by the elder is still standing, although it
is now covered with a cement veneer and a porch added. Luke Lavender's log
house was located in the vicinity of Fourteenth and O, about on the site of the
present public library. Lavender's small log home was the first to be erected on
the plat of Lincoln. Dawson's house was, however, constructed about the same
time and the first term of court was held by Judge Dundy in his house in
November, 1864. William Guy, Philip Humerick, E. T. Hudson, E. W. Warnes and
John Giles had homesteads near the plat of Lancaster, all of which are now a
part of the City of Lincoln. There were about thirty inhabitants of the Village
of Lancaster when the commissioners decided to locate the state capital upon
this site.
This ends the history of the little Village of Lancaster, for, when the plat of
Lincoln was made and the site surveyed, the former plat was disregarded and the
struggling little community was absorbed by the greater Town of Lincoln. Land
owners of Lancaster were given equivalent estates in Lincoln, as shown by the
table upon another page.
LINCOLN: The Capitol City and Lancaster Co., NE, Vol. 1; Chicago, Illinois, The
S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, (c) 1916, pp. 76-79