We
now come to the history of the organization, or
more appropriately, the reorganization, of Buffalo
County in the
year
1870.
On
May 30, 1854, President Franklin Pierce signed the
Nebraska-Kansas bill by which act Nebraska became
a
territory.
On
March 4, 1867, on proclamation of President Andrew
Johnson, Nebraska became a state. As
before noted, at the
second
session of the Territorial legislature which convened
December 18, 1855, Buffalo County was named and
its boundaries
defined, not one adjoined Buffalo County. In
fact until the year 1858 there was not a county
adjoining Buffalo
County. The establishment of Fort Kearney
in 1848, the fertility of the Wood River Valley,
the enormous emigration
over the trail north of the Platte River, doubtless
led many people to make temporary settlement along
the
trail and within the limits of Buffalo County
as first named and bounded.
When the county
was named and its boundaries
defined in 1855, Nebraska Center was named as its
county seat. In the year 1860 the county seat
was known
as Wood River Center and now known as Shelton.
It
was at Wood River Center that the election of county
officers
was held in the year 1860 as reported by the Huntsman's
Echo. From the earliest history which we have
of the
county there was a "center", a village
as it were, at that point.
It
is not difficult to understand why county organizations
in Buffalo County became disorganized under the territorial form
of government and other conditions which existed
at that date, when we consider that all lands comprised
in said
county (except the Fort Kearney Military Reservation)
were Pawnee Indian lands until ceded to the general
Government
in the year of 1857. That these lands were
not surveyed and opened to settlement until year
1867. That
in the year 1871 Indians were still hunting wild
game over the prairies of the county. That
the first piece of land owned
by an individual in the county was the "Boyd
Ranch", purchased from the Government by Joseph
Boyd in the year
1867, and that, when the county government was organized in the year 1870, there was not a land owner by
purchase,
by deed, by pre-emotion or by homestead claim in
the county except James E. Boyd, owner of the Boyd
Ranch, who was then living in Omaha. In territorial
days and previous to 1870, settlers in the county
were not land
owners, were not house builders; with a few exceptions
such as the Walshs, the Olivers, the Dugdales, the
Ownes,
the Slatterys, the Nutters, August,Meyer, and a
few others, they were a migratory class and if one
held a
county office he, seemingly, did not deem it important
to keep and official record of his administration
of the office
and when he "moved on", as most of them
seem to have done, he took with him whatever of
official record of
his office he possessed.