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The Odessa Post Office, the "flourishing" community of Odessa, Odessa Township, Odessa School District No. 130, the Odessa Cemetery and the Odessa Methodist Episcopal Church were all named after Odessa, Russia, the large Ukrainian port city on the Black Sea. That Odessa still exists. The Jewell County namesakes are not so fortunate. Today the township and the fading and forlorn church building with the cemetery on K Road are all that remain. Where exactly was the Odessa Post Office and the...
Athens Rural High School was truly one-of-a-kind. No town, just a township seeking to have a high school for their students. It was organized by the citizens of Athens Township, independent of any other district and was not connected with any other township. There was no town of Athens at the time the school was organized. There had been a community developed around the Athens Post Office in the late 1800s but that did not last. The post office was discontinued Aug. 31, 1901. The township,...
During the late1800s, near where Jewell County's Limestone and John's Creeks come together, the town of Rubens flourished. Today that area lies under Lovewell Lake. Rubens began on Jan. 31,1871, when the Rubens Post Office was established. It was named for the first Rubens postmaster, William Rubens Scott. The Rubens Post Office served patrons, with one very short interruption, until Oct. 5, 1900, when the post office was discontinued. At that time, the Mankato Post Office began serving the...
Ionia High School It was early in the history of Jewell County, Jan. 28, 1871, that the county's first school district was formed. Citizens met at the county clerk's office in Jewell City and formed District No.1, Jewell City. From that beginning, the county eventually made provision for some 165 school districts. The idea being students wouldn't have to go far from home to receive an education. By 1877, there were 125 districts formed. Jeri Shute and Erma Dillon's book Prairie Jewels tells the...
It was 75 years ago last February when fire destroyed a Superior elevator located across the street south of what is now the Petro Plus Station. At that time the Day & Frees Lumber Yard was located there and the firemen worried the fire might spread to the lumber yard. Several pictures and a story printed in this issue of The Express retell the fire story. The elevator fire was not only the largest in Superior's history but it caused a big disruption in the Superior grain market and left only...
Monday night a member of the Superior Fire Department spoke to the Superior City Council and told about the need to address the budget and the need for new equipment and adequate space to house that equipment. Since the current Public Safety Building was built about 50 years ago, equipment has grown in size and the prices have skyrocketed. Levi Gunn, the department's treasurer said the city and the department needed to develop multi-year plans for the replacement and maintenance of equipment....
With historical equipment crawling, rolling, moving or being displayed about as far as the eye could see, arriving at the site of the "Big Dig" was a bit of a "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" experience. "The Big Dig" is a simple moniker for the event's official title, Historical Construction Equipment Association (HCEA) International Convention and Old Equipment Exposition hosted by Prairie Plowing Days. The Big Dig sprawled over a larger than half-section area of the Kurt...
After a "Long Wait" (the event was cancelled in 2020 because of COVID-19) the "Big Dig" will be here Friday through Sunday! The full name of the event is the 35th Annual Historical Construction Equipment Association International Convention and Old Equipment Exposition hosted by Prairie Plowing Days – familiarly known as "The Big Dig." The event will be held on the Kurt Kocher farm south of Concordia. Find the site nine miles south of Concordia on Highway 81 and 2 1⁄2 miles west on Hawk Road, or...
The March 11, 1886 Burr Oak Herald proclaimed, "It is stated upon good authority that Ibaton, in this county, and Cora, in Smith, were named for Iba and Cora, two daughters of Thomas Comstock, one of the first settlers above Burr Oak, on White Rock Creek." Both Ibaton and Cora were post offices as well as communities. Comstock was a postmaster but didn't serve as the postmaster at either of the post offices named for his daughters. He served as White Mound postmaster from June 15, 1871 to Jan....
3 Years Ago August 9, 1901 Jewell County was asking for 28 bridges for the year, but the commissioners were going to cut the number down to those that seemed an absolute necessity. The commissioners were going over the ground themselves before passing judgment. Merchants were candling eggs and paying seven cents for the good ones. The Mankato Advocate was 11 years old and it was regarded as one of the first clean papers in this part of the state. A large portion of the stock in Jewell County was on a straw diet and wheat rations. The rest wou...
3 Years Ago August 2, 1901 Twenty-nine acres of wheat belonging to Elwood Butts yielded 829 bushels. It was estimated Kansas would raise 25 million bushels of corn during the year, a little more than twice as much as Jewell County alone used to raise in a single year. Frank Murphy, Mankato, had a close call while working with Shell and Walter Hill’s steamer at John Divel’s place. He had been feeding and jumped down to oil. As he reached over the big belt with the oil, his jacket was caught by the belt. He yanked the belt off the wheel and...
Many of us here in rural Nebraska remember wheat harvest. It was usually about a two week period that came around the first week or two of July . . . each and every year. Everyone on the farm and often people from the towns were involved in the affair. Trucks or anything that could carry wheat filled the county roads and were often lined up in a procession at the local elevator waiting to unload. My . . . how things have changed here in rural Nebraska. I know there was a wheat harvest as I saw a few fields of wheat before they were cut and...
Members of the Nuckolls County Historical Society held their annual meeting, Sunday, in Pioneer Hall, on the museum campus in Superior.. Society members and guests were present. Richard Schmeling, a Superior native and Lincoln resident, gave a presentation on the history of Nuckolls County railroads. He also donated a train schedule board, which was accepted by Nancy Meyers, museum curator. The board once adorned the wall of a Superior Burlington depot. Schmeling saved the board for posterity...
(The following article was taken out of The Nelson Gazette June 29, 1967) The Fourth of July was always celebrated with great fervor in the old days Everyone welcomed the opportunity to break the monotony of the day-to-day frontier loneliness. The first observance of the Fourth of July in Nuckolls County was in 1872. It was held under a spreading cottonwood tree on the west side of the Little Blue, opposite 'The Narrows', scene of an early-day Indian raid. The Declaration of Independence was rea...
The Superior Volunteer Fire Department is again making plans to present a free fireworks show at Brodstone Memorial Field as a climax to Superior’s July 4th activities. While coordinated by the members of the fire department, the annual show is paid for by donors who appreciate the show. Like in past years, donations may be sent to the Fireworks Fund in care of the Superior Volunteer Fire Department at P.O. Box 157. Superior, Nebraska 68978. As usual, the day will begin with the Firekracker Run. The runners and walkers will depart from City P...
The War of 1812 began when the United States declared war in June of 1812. The opposing forces were Great Britain, Ireland and their North American colonies plus certain Indian allies. One cause of the war was the British Navy's policy of stopping ships at sea and seizing men they claimed to be British citizens. There are estimates that up to 15,000 American men were seized and forced into the British Navy between 1793 and 1812. During the war, there were some 35,000 "regulars" in uniform and...
The Steuben Post Office was located in Holmwood Township, Section 12 per Shute and Dillon in Prairie Jewels. It was organized and discontinued three times. First organized on Aug. 19, 1875, it was first discontinued on June 23, 1882. It was reestablished on April 4, 1887, and discontinued for the second time on May 16, 1889. It was reestablished again on April 28, 1891, and permanently discontinued on Oct. 15, 1900. W. T. Hunter – William Timothy Hunter - was postmaster during the first and s...
Mount Carmel, located on and around the intersection of 60 Road and E Road in Erving Township, is a prominent landmark in the area. Erving Township is the southwestern most township in Jewell County. The "mount" rises to 1,814 feet, though not the highest point in Jewell County, it gives one an amazing view of the surrounding countryside. The area was named after Mount Carmel in the Holy Land. The book of Isaiah in the Bible refers to "the splendor of Carmel." According to Prairie Jewels by...
Members of the Superior Board of Education met Monday evening in regular session. They presented a glass apple to both Allison White and Diane Kile. White is the upper level music and band instructor and Diane Kile is a longtime second grade teacher. Kile is the most recent Superior teacher of the quarter. The board of education accepted recommendation from Supt. Marty Kobza to hire five new certified staff members. Ashley Wulf will serve as a middle school special education teacher. A Guide Rock resident, she has been employed as a preschool...
Jewell County was established in the late summer of 1870. Its first election was held in September. The county was growing as more settlers arrived. Soddies and dugouts were built to house the settlers and their families. Getting the living quarters built happened quickly so farm and ranch work could begin. One can imagine the scene in the Kansas song, “Home, home on the range where the deer and antelope play. Where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.” Yet, those early settlers had to face a lot of cha...
This evening, Thursday, Dec. 31, at gatherings the world over, many will raise a glass and sing these familiar words “Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” They are the first line of a poem-song written by Robert Burns in 1788 and commonly called Auld Lang Syne. Auld Lang Syne was originally written in the 18th-century Scot language spoken by Burns. Some of the lyrics, such as “we twa hae run about the braes.” (we two have run about the hillsides) are rather incomprehensible to English speakers today. Other phrases like...
Seventy-five years ago, after six years of fighting – four and a half years of world-wide fighting and United States involvement, the ravages of World War II were finally coming to an end. The cessation of combat in the European Theater came on May 8, 1945. Celebrations erupted all over Europe and in the United States. Long time Jewell resident, Norman Greene, recalls hearing about the end of the war "on the radio" and remembers a celebration in the Jewell Park to observe the end of the f...
As strange and unusual as it was, the recently completed Nuckolls County Fair is probably not the strangest fair in Nuckolls County history. The strangest title is probably still safe with the 1952 fair. This was the year Nuckolls County held two fairs. The three-day long Nuckolls County 4-H and FFA Fair was held in Superior during the first week of August. The Nuckolls County Fair was held about two weeks later on the fairgrounds south of Nelson. Only exhibits that placed at Nelson were...
Early in Jewell County history, there was discussion on the matter of what to name Town 1 South Range 8 West in Jewell County. Two suggestions were Kleveland and Norway as K. O. Kleveland, from Norway, was an early settler. But another suggestion was Harrison, after one of the two earliest setters in the township, George Harrison. The name Harrison prevailed. The readers of the August 27, 1877, Jewell County Monitor learned about a "new" post office. That post office was Harrison and it was to...
Yes, it is a story – with many starting places. Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Virginia and Cornwall, England to name a few. One beginning was in 1867, when Civil War Veteran Ogden Norman Greene left Oswego County, New York and headed west to Iowa. He had already seen the southern part of the United States during the war. His unit, Company F of the 110th New York Infantry, had been sent to New Orleans and spent the war in Louisiana and Florida. The George family had headed west from N...
