Nebraska nineteenth century

Here ... this oughtta get ya started.


Nebraska State Historical Society

Nebraska Sudies

Oldtime Nebraska

For a fuller overview, you prolly oughtta look into The Louisiana Purchase, Louis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, Stephen F. Long, John C. Fremont, Peter Sarpy and The American Fur Company, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Trade and Intercouse Act of 1834, Sioux Chief Red Cloud and the Olglala Trail, The Oregon Trail, the Bozeman Trail, the Mormon Trail, the Denver Trail, the Kansas- Nebraska Act of 1854, the Transcontinental Railroad, The Union Pacific Railroad, The Burlington Railroad, The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, the Homestead Laws of 1862, Sod Busters, the National Grange, the Farmer's Alliances, the Populist Party and William Jennings Bryan, and the controversy surrounding the Congressional override of President Andrew Johnson's 1867 veto of the Nebraska Statehood Bill, but thats all up to you. I'm too lazy to dig up any more links, but I'm sure there are literally millions of 'em out there just waitin' to be found.

Good hunting.

Timber,

thanks for your response....and no problem about you not looking the info up....i don't mind doing that as long as i know where and how to look.

thanks again.

C

also think about fences vs open range

reference site

another

http://www.surveyhistory.org/stakes_outgun_colt_revolver1.htm

husker,

thanks a bunch for the references you supplied....i looked at them...read through them quickly (will look at the first 3 again and more thoroughly when i have more time...the last reference you gave me about surveying history....i found very informative...and need to review it again.

do you know if the RR surveys came before homestead surveys in nebraska?

i'm trying to find the answer to what type of surveying the hung man had been doing....for RR railroad or homesteading....the hanging took place in the 1870s.....the people suspected of hanging him were cattle ranchers....their ranch was located along the north platte river in nebraska.....640acres....they also had an interest in the RR....which leads me to believe it's homesteading.

i wrote this....and want to make sure my statement is correct......"The ugliest charge, never proven, came from surveyor Alex Schleigal. One of his assistants was found hanging from a tree near Sidney, Nebraska, with a sign that read "Horse Thief." Schleigal was scheduled to survey [cattle rancher] range lands, an activity the [cattle ranchers] opposed because they saw it as the first step toward opening the country to homesteaders. The surveyor believed his assistant died not because he was a horse thief, but to scare the surveyors away. The surveying, however, was completed without further incidents."

looking forward to anyone's reponse to this....not just husker's. thanks.

C

I dunno for sure here, but as a history buff with a strong interest in the frontier railroads, I'd hafta say (and this is off-the-top-of-the-head stuff, here - no links or footnotes forthcoming :wink: ) any home-steadin' surveyin' woulda been done about the same time as the railroad surveyin'. The main transcontinental route had been pretty well laid out before The Civil War, and by 1866, Nebraska had been crossed east to west by rails, with branchlines and connectors aplenty built or bein' built by 1870. By the middle 1870's, there wasn't much of Nebraska that wasn't within 20 or 25 miles or so of a rail line.

The first homesteader under the Homestead Act of 1862 in Nebraska- the first in the US, in fact - was a Union Army officer named Freeman (about the exact nature of who's service there yet is some mystery), who staked his claim one minute after midnight January 1 of 1863 (there's a story about a New Year's Eve party, some whiskey, and the land agent, but nevermind). The site of Freeman's claim, near Beatrice, Gage County, in Southeastern Nebraska, is now The National Homestead Monument. The Plots, Sections, Townships, and Counties had all been surveyed and laid out well before Freeman paid his $12 for his 160 acres.

I don't really recall readin' about there bein' much cattleman-vs-farmer "Range War" activity in Nebraska; that was pretty much Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and a bit of Idaho and Nevada, as it seems to me - but its been a long, long time since I've really studied that sorta stuff. Kansas, Nebraska, and The Dakotas were pretty much farmland if exploited at all by the settlers; not real good cattle country to start with. A lotta the fuss in the Colorado/Utah/Wyoming/Montana/Idaho/Nevada region had to do with cattlemen-vs-sheepherders, not farmers, and amounted to the worst and bloodiest of the "Range Wars", BTW.

Interestingly, a lot of contention arose, particularly in Nebraska, centered on the railroads themselves; competion among the major players and the many upstarts brought about everything from bankruptcies and mergers to outright sabotage and gunplay. That didn't have much to do with the farmers, though. The railroads received staggering acreage from both the Federal Government and from the Nebraska Legislature as incentive to lay track as quickly as possible, and much of that land was sold off through the latter 1870's into the 1890s, to would-be immigrant farmers who were too late for the "free" land.

A good deal of the railroad lands wound up in the hands of speculators, who in turn reaped huge profits by gouging the incoming settlers; selling land at inflated prices, funding exhorbitant mortgages through banks they owned, foreclosing when the poor soddy couldn't meet the tab, and reselling the land to the next eager unfortunate in line. The line seemed to go on forever ... and lasted somewhat longer than did the buffalo.


Husker is a Nebraskan, so maybe he can get ya some better info.

somemore railroad history

Great link, Husker - that does offer a good starter course in the history of American Railroads. A quick chase shows me I've read - in fact have - most of the primary books listed there , and lots more listed on sites that one links to.

The Railroad - more properly The Railroad Era from the latter 2/3s of the 19th Century well into the first half of the 20th Century - is what built this nation into what it has become, IMO. Just about all the rest either was accessory to or dependent upon The Railroad.

I'm thinking if Timber and myself cannot shake it out of the trees we don't have enough clues to go on, or it's not out there.

husker, timber,

thank you both so much for helping me out here....i'm in PA...so i'm quite a distance from finding this info out....except for googling.....and ready books on the westward movement.

okay...what i'm trying to do is write a story about locals who left PA in 1850....spent time in ohio....then on to sioux city, iowa....there i know he helped to set up sioux city....started a bank and a real estate business...he contracted with the U.S. Gov't......and became involved in the Union Pacific Railroad....these people from PA also helped to organize Omaha....their ranch was located around bridgeport, NE....their foreman was killed near Clark's bridge.

so if they were involved in expanding the RR....why would they participate in having a surveyor killed if he was surveying for the RR.

my locals i am writing about made their money as ranchers....starting the ogallala cattle company.....and also with interest in the RR.

does this help any...or confuse you more?

thanks...so far you've been quite a bit of help.
C

http://www.rootsweb.com/~neresour/OLLibrary/Journals/HPR/Vol10/pages/nh10c4pl.htm

ps - the minute I hit my family name I'm done

Arkansas City Traveler, Wednesday, July 22, 1885

A Cheyenne dispatch, dated the 11th inst., says: AThe largest cattle deal of the year was consummated yesterday. The Ogallala Cattle Company, embracing A. H. Swan of Cheyenne, William A. Paxton of Omaha, and J. H. Bosler of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, bought 27,000 head of cattle, with three ranches, from Dennis Sheedy of Colorado. The cattle range is on the north side of the North Platte River, in Nebraska and Wyoming. It was sold at $70,000, making the amount involved $310,000.

ok this is cool stuff

William A. Paxton (1837-1907)

you hit the nail on the head there...WOW!! thanks!!

although, i think i came across that piece in one of my google searches.....and yes, it is pretty cool stuff. the boslers were compared to the swans....but in the mid to late 1880s bosler sold out and cleared all their business out of nebraska...which imo.....was too bad. i would liked to have seen what would have become of them if they stayed as swan did.

really good stuff on Keith County - clues,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

You're on a roll husker - tip o' the timber hat to ya.

Aside to christine - see how the railroads touched everything - even the principals in your story?

No one, however, was so much in the center of the cattle business and other enterprises as William A. Paxton.

Mr. Paxton had experienced a typical pioneer's introduction to Omaha. He had come to the city in 1857 with a man named Regan to help him build bridges out on the Military Road (now Cuming Street, Military Avenue and the Northwest Radial Highway). He had been foreman of the work between Omaha and Shell Creek and later held a $40-a-month job in Edward Creighton's construction in 1860 and 1861 of telegraph lines to Denver. In 1862 he managed a livery stable at $20 a month and engaged in freighting between Omaha and Denver. By December, 1868, he had made himself a profit of $14,500 through contracts with the Union Pacific Railroad.

He invested this money in cattle, which he brought to Omaha from Abilene, Kans., selling at a profit of 12 thousand dollars. In 1869, he built the first 20 miles of the Omaha & Northwestern Railroad and by 1875 had drummed up a business of supplying beef to the Indian agencies.

Out of this enterprise he obtained 125 thousand dollars worth of stock in the Ogallala Land and Cattle Company in 1884. Even in the course of his many other transactions, he found the time to organize a wholesale grocery house with Benjamin Gallagher under the name of Paxton & Gallagher Co.