By Curt Arens
Cedar County News, Hartington, NE
February 20, 2005
Dear Friends,
Our fine state is celebrating a birthday. Nebraska will celebrate another birthday next Tuesday, March 1. It's too many candles for one cake, but 138 years ago - back in 1867 - Congress approved Nebraska statehood and President Andrew Johnson, already at odds with Congress over post-Civil War issues, grudgingly signed the bill into law.
But we began on the road to joining the United States years earlier in 1854 when Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, establishing the two territories.
While many folks might think those little hamlets down south called Omaha and Lincoln must have been the first towns, neither existed when the territory was started. Peter Sarpy's Bellevue was actually the first settlement.
But settlement began in our neck of the woods not long afterward. On Feb. 12, 1857 - 148 years ago - Cedar County was officially organized and the new settlement of St. James became the first county seat.
Yes, Cedar County and our rolling hills and fertile valleys along the Missouri River was among the earliest settled land in Nebraska. In 1856, before surveyors made it this far north, farmers Colonel C.C. Van and Moses H. Deming laid out Old St. James, located about a mile and a half north of the present townsite.
Henson Wiseman came too, preparing his place so he could move his family here from Virginia the following year. Saby Strahm, a farmer and early livestock breeder, passed through St. James, but he didn't stay, opting instead to settle upriver, directly along the Missouri at a place that eventually became ill-fated, flood-ridden Green Island.
Some of the folks who settled knew little of farming. Others, like Van, were farmers and engineers. Utilizing their knowledge and resources, Van and Deming, for instance, started a sawmill, helping erect the first frame houses.
But everyone in those days, no matter what other trade they might have practiced, based their livelihood on farming, milking some cows, raising pigs and horses, grain and gardens and cutting timber, out of necessity to feed, clothe and shelter their families.
Why even a well-known circuit lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, who was busy riding from town to town across the Illinois prairie for court cases when Nebraska territory formed, kept and fed his own horses and milked his own cow. Lincoln grew up on a farm and was always a country boy at heart, even as President.
Like the family farmers of today who often use their talents for complimentary jobs to make ends meet, folks back then were tough, resilient, self-reliant survivors. As we wish our old state a happy birthday, we should be thankful that we were preceded by such hearty stock.
Talk with you next week.