Greeley County, Nebraska
Irish Catholic Colony

The Nebraska colony, in Greeley County, is the first colony founded by the association referred to, though it acquired land, about 10,000 acres, in one of Bishop Ireland's previously established colonies in Minnesota, which was promptly taken, and is now fully settled by a colony of Irish-American families from Boston and vicinity.

The Nebraska colony, however, is the larger and more important venture; and upon its success the association has staked a considerable part of its capital and the outcome of its enterprise.

Nebraska comprises an area of 76,000 square miles, or, 48,636,800 acres. It is between the parallels of 40° and 43° and the meridians of 95 and 104 west.

Geographically it is in the centre-line of the States of the Union, and in the pathway to the States and Territories of the Pacific slope. Its shape is nearly that of a parallelogram. Its greatest length from cast to west is 412 miles, and its greatest width from north to south 208 miles. The notes and plats in the U. S. Surveyor General's office shows 6485 miles of rivers and streams within the limits of Nebraska. The land lies in billowy prairies, with wide stretches of table-land. "The country," writes Bayard Taylor," is one of the most beautiful I ever looked upon. I am more than ever struck with the great difference between this region and that to the east of the Mississippi. There is none of the wearisome monotony of the prairies, as in Illinois, or swampy tracts as in Indiana or Ohio. The wide billowy green, dotted all over with golden islands of harvest, the hollows of dark glittering maize, the park-like clumps of timber along the course of the streams, these serve the materials which went to the making up of every landscape, and of which, in their sweet harmonious, pastoral beauty, the eye never grows weary."

(The American Catholic Quarterly Review, 1881) page 435
Submitted by Cathy Danielson