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Orville City,
the first county seat, was located by the county commissioners in 1870, and
surveyed, platted and recorded as a town by them. The site lies on a beautiful
plateau overlooking both forks of the Blue River, on the south half of the northeast
quarter of Section 22, Township 9, Range 6, west.
It was declared the county
seat of Hamilton County May 3, 1870, by a vote of the people at the first
election held in the county, and remained such until January 1, 1876, at which
date the county seat was removed to Aurora by a majority vote in compliance with
a general act of the legislature of Nebraska approved February,
1875.
The site was pre-empted by the
commissioners and surveyed by John Harris. The first to locate there were T. H.
and William Glover. T. H. Glover opened the first store, in the fall of 1872,
with a stock of general merchandise. He was followed shortly after by William
Glover, who inaugurated the second business enterprise of the town, that of a
hotel and boarding house.
The court-house was erected in May, 1872, which was
the first building put up, and in November of the same year, the first frame
house was built by T. H. Glover.
In 1873, it was a thriving town containing
three grocery and general merchandise stores, one drug store, hotel, blacksmith
shop, real estate and law office and saloon.
A school house was erected in 1873,
in which Miss Nettie Hileman taught the first term of school in 1874.
After the
removal of the county seat to Aurora, the
buildings were removed to Aurora and elsewhere, and the site of the
sometime city, later the county poor-farm, on which the county established a
poor-house in 1884 at a cost of about $2,500.
Source: History of Hamilton
and Clay Counties Nebraska, 1921, page 479, transcribed as
printed.
Transcribed
and Contributed by: Cathy Danielson
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