A century and a quarter ago Burt County history began resolving itself from the chrysalis of the immemorable eons of time during which these 327,000 acres had waited for the hand of the dominant race to lift them from their oblivion and draw out their almost infinite agricultural possibilities.

Thomas Jefferson, father of this nation's Declaration of Independence, was the first white man to have a constructive part in the opening pages of the book of time to the place where this history of Nebraska first county was to be inscribed.  In 1803 this first constructive step was taken in the form  of the purchase from Napoleon of France of Louisiana territory.  What later was to become this Burt County whose history is to be told in the succeeding pages was included in that great transaction.

In that great purchase these 512 square miles now comprising Burt County made up only an extremely infinitesimal part.  Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson can be considered the first member of the white race whose hand was lifted constructively to begin the history of this county.

DeSoto played a very small pat with his historic journey up the Mississippi during which he grandly laid claim to all the territory drained by the river and its tributaries.  The Spanish expedition sent from Mexico across the central plains of the middle western states in search the mythical "City of Gold" might have reached this far, but it is extremely doubtful.

Later journeys of French down the Mississippi from Canada counter-claimed the soil drained

by the "Father of Waters" in the name of the King of France.

France and Spain juggled the great expanse of unknown land back and forth until Napoleon of France gloriously released claim to the young American republic in exchange for $3,000,000.  Spain's defeat by France a short time before this transaction presumably gave the unqualified right of possession to the later nation.  Thus the great territory became the property of the United States under a title stable enough in that period of clouded real estate dealings between nations to satisfy the president and representatives of the American people.

Jefferson's first act after the culmination of the purchase was to acquaint himself with the unknown expanse of land he had bought for his people.  Thus,, in 1804, two young officers of the United States Army were dispatched with a company of soldiers to explore the latest acquisition of the rapidly growing republic.

Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant Clark were chosen to lead the expedition and were ordered to St. Louis with their company of men.  From St. Lewis they journeyed up the Missouri and followed its course to its headwaters.

This course carried them past the present sites of Kansas City and Omaha.  A few days later it carried them past the low and marshy swamp lands on the west side of the river which years later was to become the Missouri River bottom land of Burt County.  They viewed for the first time with white man's eyes the rolling hills a few miles back from the river on which corn was later to grow and where succeeding generations of Burt county people would thrive and prosper. They looked for the first time as representatives of the American people upon the present sites of Tekamah and Decatur.

Robert Frazier, whose grandson, John  S. Frazier, now lives in Burt county, was one of that company of soldiers under Lewis and Clark.  John S. Frazier now lives on the banks of the Missouri where that historic expedition passed 125 years ago.

That journey concluded the first chapter in the history of Burt County, for it was the period of exploration.  It was just as important, just as momentous, insofar as this book is concerned, as the similar periods of exploration which are narrated in the first chapters of the various American histories studied in the public schools of today.

Just as the conclusion of the explorations of the eastern shores of this continent ushered in the first settlements of pioneers, just in precisely the same manner did the explorations of Lewis and Clark usher into what is now Burt County the first pioneers who were to begin the settlements of this country.  

 Source:  A History of Burt County, Nebraska from 1803 to 1929