USA > Nebraska > Lancaster County > Lincoln > Lincoln, the capital city and Lancaster County, Nebraska, Volume I > Part 15
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The departure of the capital commission to hunt a site for Lincoln was a subject of merriment to the newspapers of the old capital. Not until after much traveling to and fro, looking at the sites through the length and breadth of the territory defined by the act, the commissioners on the 29th of July having issued their order locating Lincoln, in Lancaster County, on and about the site of Lan- caster, its county seat, and commenced to survey the same into blocks, lots, reser- vations, streets and alleys, did the press of Omaha wake to the realities of the situation.
Then there was music in the air. The act provided that within ten days after its passage the commissioners should qualify and give bonds to be approved by a judge of the Supreme Court. The bonds were to be filed with the state treas- urer. Now it had been ascertained that though the commissioners had sent in their bonds to the chief justice, and he had approved them in the stipulated time,
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they had not been filed with the treasurer inside of the ten days. It was an- nounced, therefore, that they had no authority to do anything under the law, and that if they sold what purported to be lots in the Townsite of Lincoln, the treas- urer, Hon. Augustus Kountze of Omaha, would receive the money and hold it for future disposition, but he would not pay out any of it as a capitol building fund. At any rate injunction would be applied for to prevent him. The announcement was calculated to discourage those intending to become purchasers of Lincoln lots. It did have a very depressing effect. The commissioners said that to be forewarned was to be forearmed, and as they had determined to avoid litigation and the possible tying up of the money until the meeting of the next Legislature, they should keep it in their own hands and pay it out without the intervention of the treasurer. This promise was faithfully kept. The next Legislature form- ally legalized this and other departures from the strict letter of the law made by them in the pursuit of success, but for the time being it was a very serious em- barrassment.
The sale of lots opened on the new site in October. The commissioners were on the spot with quite a number of possible purchasers. The auctioneer was a handsome man and had a good voice. There was a band of music in attendance, and it played as well as any band ought to play so far away from civilization. But not a bid could be coaxed from a single soul. The commissioners had de- cided, upon consideration, that they would not personally invest. It was decided proper to observe the proprieties very strictly, and to avoid future scandals they would keep out. But this was a matter of suspicion to the crowd present. If the commissioners had not enough confidence in the new city to purchase a resi- dence or business lot, why should they venture any investment? Night came on and not a lot had been sold.
A council of war was summoned in the evening in the Donovan House and the commissioners and certain gentlemen from Nebraska City were in attendance. The Nebraska City capitalists said that the commissioners ought to bid on lots, and the commissioners said that the Nebraska City men who were so much responsible for the scheme ought to bid. Finally it was conceded that both ought to bid. The Nebraska City men formed a syndicate that agreed to bid the appraised value on every lot as it was offered and as much more in case of competition as they thought safe, until they had taken $10,000 worth of lots. But there was a proviso that in case the sales did not amount in five days to $25,000, including the syndicate's $10,000, the whole business should be declared "off." the enterprise abandoned, and no money be paid in. The commissioners also rescinded their compact against becoming personal bidders, for they saw that matters were in a very precarious condition and they had to imbue the people present with confidence in Lincoln. The next day business began in earnest. When the five days had passed $44,000 had been realized, and the prospects were considered certain for the erection of a capitol building. By the time the sales at Nebraska City and Omaha had been finished $53,000 had been taken in, and no supplementary sales at Plattsmouth and Brownville were held, though compara- tively few lots had been disposed of. to realize the necessary amount.
Lancaster, the site of which had been swallowed up by Lincoln after the proprietors had deeded it to the state in consideration of the location of the capital, was a hamlet of five dwellings, a part of one being used as a store, and the stone
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walls of a building commenced as a seminary by the Methodist Church, but which had partly burned before completion and had been temporarily abandoned. The residents on the original plat of Lincoln were Capt. W. T. Donovan, whose house stood on the corner of Ninth and Q; Jacob Dawson, whose log dwelling was on the south side of O, between Seventh and Eighth, and who had com- menced the foundations of a residence on the corner of Tenth and O; Milton Langdon, who lived in a small stone house east of Dawson's, between O and P; Luke Lavender, whose log cabin stood in Fourteenth, just south of O; and John Mckesson, who was constructing a frame cottage two or three blocks north of the university. ( Note : Lavender's cabin location is now understood to have been on Fifteenth and O, and was the first house on the site of Lincoln.) Scattered about just outside the city limits as then established, on premises that since then have been brought in as additions, were the residences of Rev. J. M1. Young, Wil- liam Guy, Philip Humerick, E. T. Hudson, E. Warnes and John Giles. Between the date of the location and the first sale of lots a number of buildings were erected on the site, the owners taking their chances at the sales of securing their titles by purchase. There were two frame stores, one occupied by Pflug Brothers, and another by Rich & Company, a law office by S. B. Galey, a shoe shop by Robert and John Monteith, a stone building, afterwards rented to the Common- wealth, the predecessor of the State Journal, by Jacob Drum, a hotel called the Pioneer House by Colonel Donovan. These buildings were located on or in the vicinity of the public square and fixed the business center of Lincoln.
As soon as the sale was finished the commissioners procecded to advertise for plans for a capitol building. John Morris was the successful architect and Joseph Ward secured the contract for its construction on his bid of $49,000.
The excavation was commenced in November and by the Ist of December of the following year, 1868, was sufficiently completed for occupancy, and the governor issued his proclamation transferring the seat of government to Lincoln and for the removal of the state offices and archives to the new building. The first capitol was constructed of sandstone, quarried at various points within Lan- caster County, with a facing of magnesian limestone from a quarry near Beatrice. This stone was hauled the forty miles over roads and bridges in part constructed by the contractor.
The considerations that led the commissioners to select Lincoln in preference to the sites offered at Ashland, Milford, Camden and other points were, first, the fact that in the several preliminary surveys made from various points on the Missouri River from Plattsmouth down to Falls City, all had this place as a common point ; it was the natural railroad center, to all appearances, for the large and irregular parallelogram running west from the Missouri, between the Platte on the north, and the Kansas or Kaw on the south, to the plains of Eastern Colorado. The eastern portion of this parallelogram was even then alleged by enthusiastic Nebraskans to be the garden spot of the continent. It has produced the largest average of corn to the acre of any equal and continuous area reported by our census gatherers. At that time, though its capacity for corn was not fully appreciated, it was regarded as a wonderful wheat growing section. It has lost its prestige in spring wheat, but it holds its own in corn, oats, grass, and fruit, and is all that the fancy of the fathers of '67 painted it.
The second consideration was the proximity of the great salt basin, in which
Lavender Cabin, first house on the site of Lincoln
Looking west from old postoffice, 1881
PADITS
STATIONCHY
WALLPAPCA
Looking east on O from southwest corner of Eleventh and O streets, about 1875
Street scene, probably looking east from Tenth and O, about 1875
EARLY SCENES IN LINCOLN
[ From Clement 's Collection of Early Nebraska Photographs. Property of and used by permission of Nebraska History Seminar, State University ]
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all the salt springs of the state that gave promise of future importance were located. It was generally believed that the salt manufacture alone would build a stirring city. The third reason was that it was about as far from the Missouri River as it was advisable to go. To take it twenty miles farther west woukl be to remove it from any immediate expectation of rail communication, and so increase the expense of building that it would be impossible to dispose of the lots or to erect a capitol with the proceeds within the two years, and hence the enter- prise would fail. It was furthermore generally believed that the site selected was about midway between the western limit of arable land, and that it would always be the center of population.
The Legislature met in January, 1869, in the new capitol. approved the acts of the commissioners without very much criticism, provided for the erection of a state university and agricultural college on the site reserved. and for an insane hospital on state lands secured by the commission on Yankee Hill, and ordered the sale of the remaining lots and blocks belonging to the state to furnish the funds for such buildings in connection with certain lands available for the purpose. They also made appropriations amounting to about sixteen thousand dollars for completing the capitol building with a dome, and for defraying the expense of "extras" ordered by the commissioners on the state house to make it comfortable and habitable. Several thousand dollars were used in grading the grounds, fencing the same, planting them with trees, and erecting outbuildings. The total cost of the building, fittings and grounds, is finally stated at $83,000.
Under the various acts and appropriations of that Legislature the sale of lots continued at intervals during '69 and '70. Three hundred and sixteen thousand dollars was the sum realized from these sales, making a sum total of about three hundred and seventy thousand dollars that the original site of Lincoln brought into the state. It was not a bad investment for young Nebraska, but its success as a real estate speculation was almost wholly due to the energy and pluck of the commissioners, that led them from time to time to overleap technical ob- stacles and defects in the law, and take desperate political and financial chances as the alternative of the ignominious failure of the schemes. They were applauded and honored in '69 and '70, but a reaction set in in '71 and they met a Nemesis that for a time threatened them not only with disgrace but absolute destruction.
But for three years these men played the star parts on the political stage in the infant state, and they have left a monument to the efficiency of their work, to their business sagacity, and to their political courage, that bids fair to be as enduring as history.
In its first year Lincoln grew to be a village of about Soo inhabitants. In 1870 the census revealed a population of 2,400. In 1875 it was the second city in the state and numbered 7.300. In 1880 it had 13,000 people and in 1885 it had reached and passed 20,000.
When it was surveyed the nearest railroad connecting with the eastern markets was at Omaha and St. Joseph, Mo. In 1880 it had eight diverging lines- to all points of the compass, and in 1890 it bids fair to have a round dozen spokes to its commercial wheel. In this remarkable progress, she is but an exemplar of her state and her people. A century of improvement in twenty years is the rule in Nebraska and has been from the day she took her place in the galaxy of the Union.
CHAPTER X
THE BEGINNING OF LINCOLN
Notwithstanding the great honor that had been accorded Lancaster County in placing the capital of the State of Nebraska within her borders, the struggle to keep the capital here and to create the new City of Lincoln was a contest of discouragement, of inward machinations and hopeless outlook. The story of the first lot sales and attendant circumstances is related elsewhere. The first half year, 1867, brought little improvement beyond a few squatters, but in the next year, 1868, the Town of Lincoln acquired new courage and by the end of the year had fully five hundred inhabitants. Many of these settlers owned lots in the town which they had bought for prices from twenty to fifty dollars, some of them now being worth as much as thirty thousand dollars. The settled portion of the town was bounded by Eighth, Twelfth, R and N streets.
When the capital was located here there were just two stores on the site of the town, one being owned by the Pflug Brothers and the other by Max Rich & Company; these two places stood on opposite sides of the square. As stated before, the very first house to be constructed on the site of Lincoln was the log cabin of Luke Lavender, located very near the site of the Lincoln Public Library. Jacob Dawson abandoned his log cabin near O and Eighth streets, and erected a log and stone house back some distance from the corner of O and Tenth, south- west. The first business block erected in Lincoln was the Sweet Block, on the northeast corner of Tenth and O streets. This was constructed early in 1868 by Darwin Peckham and is still standing, although not to be recognized in its present form. The structure was in fact three buildings erected together by James Sweet, the largest purchaser of the first Lincoln lots, A. C. Rudolph and Pflug Brothers. Mr. Sweet and N. C. Brock opened the first bank in Lincoln in the southwest corner room, first floor, in June, 1868. This bank continued until 1871, when it was reorganized as the State Bank of Nebraska by Samuel G. Owen, James Sweet and N. C. Brock. Near the same time that the bank opened for business, A. C. Rudolph opened a grocery store in the next room to the north and Pflug Brothers a stock of merchandise in the third room from the corner. The upper part of the building was used for offices, some of them, for many years, being used for county purposes. Mr. Sweet also kept the papers of the state treasury there when he held that office in 1869.
The first clothing house in the town was opened in 1868 by Bain Brothers on the southeast corner of Tenth and O streets. Prior to this they had conducted a real estate business in a front room on Tenth Street, just south of their clothing house. D. B. Cropsey also conducted a real estate office on the southwest corner of Tenth and O in company with his father, A. J. Cropsey. In 1868 Bohanan
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TENTH STREET, LINCOLN, BETWEEN O AND N, 1875
By courtesy of G. R. Wolf ot Lincoln
SWEET BLOCK. CORNER OF TENTH AND 0. 1stis First block in Lincoln, containing Sweet and Broek's Bank
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Brothers opened up a meat market west of the Cropsey office. Squire Blazier also opened up a meat market near the present site of the federal building, Gov- ernment Square then being called Market Square. Early pictures of the square show that the area was a very popular place as a meeting ground for wagons, horses, cattle, emigrant trains and such. Quite an amount of business, partieu- larly land business, was transacted in the open ground of this square. On O Street, third door west from Tenth, immediately across from the present city hall, then the postoffice, David May opened a small stock of clothing for sale in 1868. The statement has been made, and believed, that David May's store was on Tenth Street, but the early photographs printed herein will show that it is untrue. South of the alley on Tenth R. R. Tingley opened a small drug store and a short distance south C. F. Damrow started a tailoring shop. S. B. Pound had a small stock of groceries at what is now 915 O Street, where he went into partnership with Max Rich during a few months of 1867-68. The next year he sold his interest in the establishment to Rich & Oppenheimer. Mr. Pound afterward entered the law and became noted for his success in this profession.
In the block bounded by O, N, Eighth and Ninth streets there was one build- ing, Dunbar's livery stable, on the northeast corner. A photograph of this ac- companies this chapter. In the block bounded by O, P, Eighth and Ninth there were two or three buildings. On the southeast corner Dr. H. D. Gilbert, formerly of Nebraska City, had established a mercantile house. His small home stood just north of the store. Humphrey Brothers succeeded Doctor Gilbert shortly after- wards. Milton Langdon lived in the rear of the southwest corner of Eighth and Q streets. His milk house, a little to the south, served for a time as the first jail in the city and county. In the block bounded by P. Q, Eighth and Ninth H. S. Jennings built a stone residence near the northeast corner. In the block bounded by P, Q, Ninth and Tenth there were several buildings, large and small. On the northwest corner was the Pioneer House, the first hotel in Lincoln, managed by I. A. Scoggin. John Cadman built up the walls of the burned seminary, opened it as a hotel and called it the Cadman House. After running it for a few months he sold it to Nathan Atwood, who constructed a brick front to it and named it the Atwood House. The building was burned in 1879. In this same block, on the northeast corner, was the Methodist Church. The lots for this were donated by Governor Butler. On P Street, Seth B. Galey, then county clerk, constructed a small stone office. Next to him on the west was a small building occupied by S. B. Pound and Seth Robinson, lawyers. At 922 P Street was the Monteith shoe shop. In the block enclosed by Q, R, Eleventh and Twelfth, north of the southwest corner, was the stone schoolhouse, the first in Lincoln. Between O, P, Tenth and Eleventh streets the first saloon in Lincoln was started by Ans and George Williams. Their building was the first completed on the east side of the square. It stood north of the center of the block and the upper floor was used for various offices. In the front room Thomas H. Hyde conducted a land office, a popular rendezvous for the politicians of the day. The saloon on the lower floor became a notorious resort of early Lincoln. D. A. Sherwood had a real estate office near the southeast corner of the block, also a small stock of gro- ceries. Behind these shops, to the north and west, was located the first lumber yard in the city, owned by the firm of Monell & Larkley. Shortly Valentine Brothers started a lumber yard on Eleventh, between M and N. During 1868-69 Vol. I- 8
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both of these lumber concerns employed wagons and teams to transport lumber from the Missouri River, from a point six miles above Nebraska City. A. J. Cropsey built a residence near where the south end of the Capital Hotel stands.
W. W. Carder's newspaper, the Commonwealth, was located near the middle of the east side of the block enclosed by N. O, Tenth and Eleventh streets. On the southwest corner of the block William Shirley had a boarding house and next to it, on the north, was Cox's grocery and boarding house. Near the present location of the Harley Drug Store William Rowe owned a harness shop, the first in Lincoln. About three lots east on O Street was the real estate office of J. P. Lantz. Mr. Lantz published a real estate monthly, the Nebraska Intelligencer, for seven years. Two lots farther east was the residence of William Guy. On the southeast corner of Twelfth and O streets, where Rector's drug store is located, Charles May conducted a bakery. North of this, in the vicinity of the old Burr Block, stood William Allen's residence. Leighton & Brown had a small drug store on the southeast corner of O and Eleventh. Seth H. Robinson lived on the northwest corner of Twelfth and P streets.
The United States Land Office was moved from Nebraska City to Lincoln in 1868 and was in charge of Stewart McConiga.
On the petition of a majority of the inhabitants of the city the county com- missioners ordered on April 7, 1868, that the Town of Lincoln be declared a body corporate. L. A. Scoggin, B. F. Cozad, Doctor Potter, W. W. Carder and A. L. Palmer were appointed trustees of the new corporation. An election was held May 18, 1868, when H. S. Jennings, S. B. Linderman, H. D. Gilbert, J. J. Van Dyke and D. W. Tingley were elected trustees. The town organization of 1868 was not maintained and a petition for a new organization, signed by 169 citizens, was presented to the board of county commissioners. The town was then rein- corporated on April 7, 1869, and made to include section 26, the west half of sec- tion 25, the southwest quarter of section 24, and the south half of section 23, all in town 10 north, range 6 east. H. S. Jennings, S. B. Linderman, H. D. Gilbert, J. L. MeConnell and D. W. Tingley were selected as trustees and Seth Robinson, A. J. Cropsey and T. N. Townley were appointed judges of election. The first election under the new organization was held May 3. 1869. The following men were elected trustees of Lincoln: H. D. Gilbert, C. H. Gere, William Rowe, Philetus Peck and J. L. MeConnell. The board organized with H. D. Gilbert, chairman ; J. R. DeLand, clerk; and N. C. Brock, treasurer.
In all, the year 1869 was a very good one for the new City of Lincoln. Lots had sold well and had commanded good prices, or what were considered good prices at that time. The Legislature met that year and ratified the work of the commissioners in selecting Lincoln as the state capital. This gave confidence to the people and the future of the town, its development and progress were assured. Mr. C. H. Gere wrote the following in regard to the first Legislature :
"The members of the first Legislature brought their cots, blankets and pillows with them in their overland journeys in wagons (hired) or the jerkies of the stage line, and lodged, some in newly erected store buildings, some in the upper rooms of the state house, while the wealthier lawmakers boldly registered at the Atwood hostelry, and paid their bills for extras, including 'noise and confusion' during the senatorial mill between Tipton, Butler and Marquett ; and how they all agreed, after some preliminary hair-pulling, that the new capitol was a success, and or-
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By courtesy of (. R. Wolf of Liteon
LINCOLN'S FIRST POSTOFFICE
John Dunbar's livery at left and Judge Pound's store and postoffice at right
C
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dered a domc erected thereon reaching the upper atmosphere, and confirmed the deeds, regular and irregular, of the commission, and gave us a cemetery in which to bury our dead; how they passed a bill for the organization of the state uni- versity, and ordered a further sale of lots and lands to build the dome and con- struct a university building, a wing of an insane hospital, and a workshop for the penitentiary and how they were all built in part or in whole of the old red sandstone of the vicinity, and came to grief soon after, may not be an interesting story today, but it was full of eloquence, fire and significance for those who were on the ground at the time.
"From the adjournment of that Legislature, the body that took in hand the building up of the new commonwealth and the laying of the foundation of its great institutions, so ably aided by the executive officers of our first state admin- istration to this time, every six working days of every week of the twenty years (written in 1889) has seen completed an average of ten buildings on the site of the city consecrated to the memory of the great emancipator and war President.
"No body of men in forty years accomplished more. Every law passed by that memorable Legislature of '69 weighed a ton. Its work was original and creative, and it did it well. Its moving spirit was the governor, David Butler. Some of its members came down to Lincoln from hostile localities, and had it in their hearts to destroy him and his works; but before the session was a fort- night old, his genial though homely ways, his kindness of heart, his sturdy com- mon sense, the originality of his genius, and the boldness of his conceptions, cap- tured them, and when the forty days were done, no man in the two houses avowed himself the enemy of David Butler."
In a pamphlet written by J. H. Ames, attorney, in 1870, the following is stated :
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