County Seat Battle

The County Seat Battle

After the great rush of 1886, people still came and a few more claims were filed. For the next three years, however, land was bought and sold far more than it was homesteaded. After a year or so many found treeless plains were not as much to their liking as they had thought. Land locators were gradually replaced by real estate agents and lawyers.
With the land pretty well settled, Dundy Countians began to turn their attention to the business of getting it more civilized. Building (ECGS) new schools, churches, roads, bridges and entire towns occupied people from the fall of 1886 through 1889.

No sooner had the first swell of homesteaders arrived in April of 1885 than a clamor was raised to bridge the Republican south of Benkelman. The bulk of business for the county seat of Dundy was coming from Kansas during that period. There were daily freight and stage trips to Wano, as well as shoppers coming from the new Kansas farms. To reach Wano without a detour of several miles, it was necessary to ford both the north and south forks of the Republican. On both forks, approaches were steep and quicksand was a constant menace.

Finally, in February of 1887, bridges were completed across both forks. By that time, Haigler had become a center of commerce, depending heavily on Kansas trade also, and a third Republican bridge was built there.

School districts were popping up everywhere in 1886 and following years. In 1887, there were about 30 schools in the county and the number passed 50 in 1889. Almost all the schools began in sod buildings which were replaced with frame structures as soon as possible. Records indicate there were 263 children of school age in Dundy County by May, 1886. That number increased steadily over the next three or four years.

The distance to town was a chronic irritation to families living more than a few miles north of the railroad. Visiting town--any town--was often a two-day round trip by team and wagon. Even a quick trip on a good saddle horse would require a full day. Promoters saw an easy solution to the problem: Since it was so far to town for the people, they would bring the people towns. The most logical site for another town was Ough, but John Ough was not a real promoter. The community bearing his name had some business but the little settlement never blossomed into a real town.

About seven miles due west of Ough. another promoter had grander visions and the drive to see his dreams become reality. Late in the summer of 1887, J. N. Williamson opened a store in his half-sod, half-dugout house. He also applied for a post office but was turned down because the Neel Post Office was only four miles away. Williamson, then, apparently worked some kind of deal with J. W. Neel. At any rate, the Neel Post Office was moved to the Williamson Store in the fall of '87, with Williamson as the new postmaster.

A branch of the Ough Turnpike, which led to the Chase County settlement of Hamilton and served as a shortcut to Imperial in good weather, ran past the store and post office adding to Williamson's trade. This road was far inferior to the main turnpike and was usually avoided by heavy wagons. It was a horse and light-load road that brought quite a bit of traffic past the new Neel location.

Business was so good, in fact, that Williamson quickly set about putting up a frame building and adding a hotel to his enterprises. At the same time, he laid out a town site and started looking for businesses to come help him fill it up. Within six weeks, Neel went from one sod house and store combination to a town complete with more stores, hotels, lumber yards, hardware stores, livery barns, restaurants and a variety of other business establishments. Soon a newspaper was added.

A. N. Pence published the first issue of The Neel Signal on December 1, 1887. From the beginning, there was little doubt about the main issue in the Neel community. The Signal immediately began editorializing about the many reasons the county seat of Dundy County should be moved from Benkelman to Neel. The first blasts had been fired in a red-hot battle of works which came close to erupting into a battle of bullets a few times during the next two years.

Before things really had a chance to heat up, however, another contender entered the fray. It was Allston, located near the middle of the county, and like Neel, the result of a promoter's sales pitch.

The Allston town site was the scene of dispute from the beginning. A man named David Rallston filed on the land and began to make improvements. Then, a woman named Francis Hudson appeared with a claim to the same quarter section. Lawyers were called in and it was eventually determined Francis Hudson had filed her claim 20 minutes before Rallston had, although she waited awhile to move onto the land. Not only did Rallston lose his 160 acres, but the records also indicated he had a claim filed, making it impossible to take up another one. He was also out the $14 fee. It was months before the land office was able to straighten out the matter. In the meantime, Rallston had to watch all the good land being gobbled up.

To add insult to injury, at least on Rallston's part, the woman soon decided she didn't want to be a homesteader after all. When she packed up and left, Charles Towle, soon to be a town promoter, acquired the quarter section through a pre-emption claim.

After the usual sod house, the first building on the Allston site was a sod school. Towle soon followed with a store, then laid out a townsite, offering town lots at $10 each. Towle named the town after David Rallston, loser of the land. When Towle applied for a post office, he learned Rallston was similar to another post office name in Nebraska and he was instructed to come up with a different name. He simply dropped the "R" and Rallston became Allston which was acceptable to the Post Office Department.

As had Williamson at Neel, Towle began looking for business to locate at his new town. In short order, the usual merchants and traders were on hand and a full-grown town was established. Before long, a printing press was brought in and the first editions of the Allston Times were going out. Naturally, one of the major issues considered by the Times was what a poor location Benkelman was for a county seat. Allston would be much better, according to Times Publisher and Editor, Charles Towle.

As mentioned in an earlier chapter, Benkelman had become the county seat of Dundy County by virtue of being the only town in the county. County organizers had not thought to make selection of a county seat part of the election process when the first county officers were voted in; therefore, Benkelman was officially in a temporary position. That oversight of the organizers was coming back to haunt them by 1888.

In 1888, Benkelman was holding onto the county seat position by no authority to do so beyond pure audacity. Talk began to circulate in other towns, notably Neel and Allston, about seizing the county records by force. They were held back only by the knowledge the records were scattered all over Benkelman and it would be impossible to gather up everything before Benkelman townspeople could muster enough men to put up strong resistance.

County records were scattered because county offices were. Office holders conducted county business from their homes or a store in town. When a new candidate was elected to office, the records had to be moved, a fact other communities were quick to point out.
So, 1888 found six towns: Benkelman, Max, Ives, Haigler, Allston and Neel, all pushing for status as the county seat. There were six newspapers being published, one each in Haigler, Neel and Allston and three in Benkelman. (The third, The Dundy County Democrat, had been started in 1887.) The three Benkelman papers couldn't agree on much of anything else but they could agree their town should retain its position in county government. The Signal, The Reporter and The Times were equally sure the county seat should be moved. The question had become a mud-slinging issue of the first order.

In addition to the obvious advantage of having the county records, scattered though they might be, Benkelman could claim to be the only incorporated town in Dundy County. (The village had incorporated on February 8, 1887.) It also had rail and telegraph service, both important considerations. The disadvantage Benkelman suffered was location. Almost on the south county line and far toward the east portion of the county, it was too far away from areas where the bulk of homesteaders had settled. People north and west would require two days to get there and back when they needed to conduct county business. Haigler suffered the same problem, being in the southwest corner of the county.

Neel, by far the most vocal of the contenders, never ceased to point out the distance problem while conveniently ignoring the obvious fact its community was only two miles from the north county line.

Allston, being fairly close to the center of the county, was the logical location. It also had the advantage of a constant rumor being circulated about a north/south railroad to be built through Dundy County to connect with Imperial.

Both Allston and Neel offered inducements to the county in the form of land grants and a promise to build a courthouse. Benkelman businessmen finally became worried enough to take action. A petition was presented to the county commissioners demanding a bond election to build a courthouse in Benkelman. The county had actually allocated $500 for that purpose back in 1885, but construction was never started because the amount was too small for a decent building, and small though it was, there wasn't enough money in the county treasury to cover even $500.

The 1888 courthouse bond issue was worded in such a way that no choice was given as to where the courthouse would be built. Benkelman was specified. When the votes were counted, there was no doubt about the sentiment of most Dundy Countians. They wanted a courthouse, but not in Benkelman. The bond proposal went down in a resounding defeat. Only Benkelman and Indian Creek precincts came up with a majority in favor of the issue. The election results only served to add fuel to the fires burning up the pages of various county newspapers.

Then, out of nowhere, came the town that never was, and it came within a hair-breadth of becoming the county seat. It was called Dundy Centre and it only existed on paper and in the mind of a promoter named Skinner. Today the exact location of Dundy Centre is unknown, and even Skinner's first name has been forgotten, but in 1888 it seemed he had the answer for which everyone had been looking.

Skinner laid out 650 town lots in the almost exact middle of the county and offered them free to anyone who wanted to build for either business or residence. The catch, of course, was that Dundy Centre would be named the county seat.

The Dundy Centre plan quickly gained widespread support among farmers who recognized the central location was the only reasonable and fair solution to the problem that was threatening to tear the county apart. Pressure began to mount in favor of another election with two questions on the ballot--one, a bond issue to finance a courthouse, another to determine where the courthouse would be built. It seems certain that if such an election would have been held, Dundy Centre would have been selected as county seat. Before that could happen, however, the people of Benkelman pulled what they readily admitted was a "fast one."

Another courthouse bond issue election was held, only this time it was put before voters in only two precincts -- Benkelman and Indian Creek. It passed, of course, and the next day construction was started. The county commissioners then made a move that was open to question from a legal standpoint, but proved effective nonetheless. By resolution, they declared Benkelman the county seat of Dundy County, based on the fact it was the only town with a courthouse. On New Year's Day, 1889, the new courthouse was dedicated with a day-long ceremony followed by a dance. Attendance at the noon banquet and the night of dancing was by invitation only. Few people from Allston and Neel received invitations.
Dundy Countians had more to occupy their time than local politics during the late '80s, of course, One of the most interesting projects under way at that time was in Neel, soon to change its name to Hiawatha. It was construction of the Hiawatha Academy which gave Hiawatha a unique place among towns in Southwest Nebraska.

The academy came into being almost by accident. In November, 1888, a young minister of the Friends Society named Herbert J. Mott, first came to Dundy County in order to visit with his sister and brother-in-law in Benkelman. His brother-in-law, Philip Marshall, had a lumber yard, and one day in late November, Marshall asked if Mott would mind going to Neel to attempt collection of an overdue debt due on a load of lumber.

Mott made the trip with a borrowed horse and buggy, found the debtor and settled the matter, then stopped at a Neel restaurant for lunch. While eating, Mott struck up a conversation with H. P. Kenny who had taken over as publisher and editor of the Neel Signal. When Kenny learned Mott was an ordained minister, he invited the young preacher to come the following Sunday for services. Neel had a Union Sunday School, Kenny explained, but no preacher. Mott declined the invitation, finished lunch and returned to Benkelman, never dreaming he would ever see the town of Neel again.

Newspaperman Kenny had other ideas about that. When the Signal came out on Thursday, a half page announcement informed Neelites the Reverend H. J. Mott, a Quaker, would hold preaching services after Sunday School the following Sunday, explaining a preacher was needed and someone would be in town Saturday to pick him up. Mott received the news Saturday morning, too late to send a rejection back to Neel. A short time later, town founder J. N. Williamson showed up with transportation. Mott gave in and decided to go, although he said in later years he really didn't want to.

A fair-sized crowd was on hand Sunday, drawn mostly by curiosity according to Mott. None of them had ever heard a Friends Society minister before, and they wanted to see what brand of religion he preached. To the surprise of everyone present, the quiet, unassuming, 25-year-old Quaker proved to be a full-fledged, devil-chasing, Bible-thumping hell-fire and brimstone, rafter-raising, go-getter when he got behind the pulpit. In other words, he was the kind of preacher frontier folks loved.

He had reluctantly agreed to hold one service. By popular demand he stayed to preach every single night for six straight weeks. At every service, an overflow crowd was pressed in to the combination Sunday School and civic hall above the newspaper office, During the six weeks, Mott decided to cast his lot with the inspiring homesteaders around Neel. Also during that six weeks, he decided he could bring more to the community than pulpit-pounding preaching. In his mind, the idea of an academy was formed.

Mott left Neel with a promise he would return with funds to make the academy dream a reality and he was as good as his word. He went east, visiting Friends Society churches and pleading the cause of his grander congregation out on the barren plains. Mott was just as good at fund raising as he was at preaching and by late summer in 1889, he was back with the money.

During the summer, the people of Neel, for reasons lost to history, petitioned the Post Office Department to change the name of their town to Hiawatha. The change was approved and what started to be the Neel Academy went up as the Hiawatha Academy. The doors were open to young men and women of any faith who wanted to study to become school teachers or take courses in preparation for entering a real college. (A college degree was not required for school teachers in those days.) Dozens of young Dundy Countians found the door of opportunity opened to them at the two-story academy, and Hiawatha-trained school teachers soon became in demand throughout the Great Plains.

While the courthouse dispute was under way and the academy was being built, there were constant improvements being made on farms and in towns. Better roads were built, more acres were plowed, better homes and barns were erected and businesses enlarged. Dundy County had become farming country.

Rains came each year, right on schedule, as farmers planted and harvested, every crop better than the year before. Homesteaders wrote long, glowing letters to folks back in their old home town, bragging about owning 160 acres in the Garden of Eden. Anyone willing to work could not fail.

Only a few old-timers mentioned that the steady precipitation year after year was unusual. The newcomers took it for granted.

During the last half of the 1880's, Dundy County went from open rangeland, boasting of only one small settlement, to a thriving, productive farming county. Six towns, several settlements and general stores with post offices dotted the county. It was difficult to believe so much had happened in so short a time. It was the greatest land boom America had ever seen. It was great, grand and glorious.

Previous : V. Out on the Lone Prarie
Continued : VII. The County Seat Battle

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