Community Profiles

  The History of Jefferson County

Long before Jefferson County was settled, it was used a a transportation corridor. Indians used the Little Blue River valley, which cuts through the county from southeast to northwest, for traveling to and from hunting grounds. Settlers on their way to Oregon and California started making either way through the county in 1842, a year after scout Kit Carson and John C. Fremont traced the old Indian trail.

Hundreds of thousands eventually used the Oregon Trail, But few stayed until 1856 when Newton Glenn settled on Rock Creek in the center part of the  county and Dan Patterson settled on Big Sandy Creek in the northwest part of the county. Both established permanent residences and began stations on the Oregon Trail to sell goods and services to travelers.

That set the stage for more settlers and by the time the Pony Express began carrying mail across the western United States and through the county on the Oregon Trail in 1860, about 30 households had been established.

At that time Jefferson and Thayer counties were both know as one county...Jones...and they were not separated until 1867 when Nebraska became a state.

From 1857 to 1864 Jefferson was attached to Gage County for judicial purposes, during which time there were several important criminal cases tried  in adjacent Gage County. The settlers in the county established their own government at Big Sandy Station in 1861 and held their first county elections in 1864, electing James Slaughter as county clerk, Thomas Helvey as county treasurer, Peter Hanna as sheriff and Ed Farrell as probate judge.

Meridian was the first town organized in the new county of Jefferson in 1868 and acted as the county seat until it lost out to Fairbury in 1869, which was more centrally located and rumored to be getting a railroad.

The first courthouse was built in Fairbury in 1871 as a brick building on the southwest corner of the downtown square and remains today, the survivor of several fires on the south side of the square. As the county grew, offices were rented in a building on the northeast corner of the square in what is now the First National Bank Building, and a new three-story stone courthouse was built in 1890. The courthouse, with its statues and copper-plated dome, stands today.

The Little Blue, a weekly newspaper established in 1868 by D.C Jenkins and M..J. Kelly, was the first paper printed in the county. It was printed at Jenkins' Mills, a half mile below the present town of Steele City.

The first mill in the county was built on Rose Creek, near Thayer County, in 1863, by Rev. Ives Marks. Although not very extensive it was the only mill in the county until 1867, at which time D.C. Jenkins built a mill just below Steele City on the Little Blue. Marks also preached the first sermon in the county.