© MJH 2016 for Buffalo County NEGenWeb Project
Jim McKee: Publisher sought to move U.S. capital to Nebraska
By JIM MCKEE / For the Lincoln Journal Star / Apr 24, 2016
With permission from the author
While virtually all of Nebraska’s county seats originated in or were subsequently moved to the center of their constituencies, why does it not make sense to put the state capital and, while we're at it, the U. S. capital in Kearney?
Moving Nebraska’s capital was accomplished once and discussed several times subsequently.
What is seldom remembered, however, is that there was considerable effort expended in the 1860s and 1870s to relocate the District of Columbia to Buffalo County.
Moses Henry Sydenham was born in London in 1835. At the age of 9, he began working as a suspenders-maker for 4 cents a week, moving up to producing curtain fringe for 37.5 cents per week. He then worked for four years in a bindery, and when his father died, he became responsible for his entire family and began working for a printer. By 18, he was publishing a weekly newspaper.
Becoming a seaman in 1853, Sydenham traveled first to New York City, and on a subsequent trip landed at Savannah, Georgia, in 1856. Deciding that a life at sea was not for him, he began working his way up the Mississippi River, and, while working at the Kansas City Enterprise, caught what he described as “bilious fever.”
An agent of Russell, Majors & Waddell convinced him that he could do well working for them as a teamster and that outdoor work would cure the fever. His first trip west took him through Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie. On the return trip in February 1857, a blizzard stopped the party at Fort Kearny. It immediately was followed by a second snowstorm so dense that the sutler’s clerk lost his way going from the store to his quarters and was not found till spring by several Pawnee.
John Heth, the sutler, hired Sydenham to replace the clerk and the following year made him the fort postmaster as well.
With the organization of Kearney County the following year, Kearney City, located just west of the fort, was designated as the county seat, with Sydenham appointed as a county commissioner.
In 1862, Sydenham began publishing the Kearney Herald at the fort as the first newspaper in the county. About the same time the notion was born that Kearney City should be the capital of both Nebraska and the United States. In 1866, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman felt that the railroad’s arrival and subsequent settlement of the area made Fort Kearny redundant, but Sydenham convinced him that one company should be left to protect the area from the Sioux.
Sydenham, meanwhile, established a new paper, the Central Star, dedicated to moving the U.S. capital to the center of the country. He served as a delegate to the national capital removal convention in 1870 in Louisville, Kentucky. Sydenham’s proposal spoke of how much more secure from enemy attack a central capital would be, citing the War of 1812 as an example. There was plenty of empty land, 10 square miles on the Fort Kearny reservation alone, and all railroads would soon see the advantage to transportation and freight connections.
Rail transport would be supplemented by a system of canals with water furnished by the Platte River. He further suggested that he, as agent, could sell 64,000 sections of the reservation for enough money to build the new capitol and city with all amenities including vast park lands. He also projected that the entire program would “redeem the national debt within 10 years.”
Although it sounded foolproof, he reported that there were “too many representatives from too many places” for any individual proposal. The entire convention failed.
Sydenham was not idle. He ran for the state legislature in 1868, but claimed that he lost “because of a flood of illegal votes by cowboys from the west end of the state (and) political wire-working.” He contested the vote, but it stood.
Fort Kearny closed in 1871 and Sydenham moved his store to Kearney City, which he renamed Centoria. The St. Joseph & Denver City Railroad failed to reach the area, terminating at Hastings.
By 1878, the Union Pacific hired Sydenham as a mail clerk for the route between Omaha and Ogden, Utah. During his last years Sydenham lived in the new Kearney, to the north of the old fort and Centoria, and there established the Central Star of Empire, a paper promoting Christian ideals.
He explained how the new city of Kearney inherited the extra "e" at the end of its name, while the fort, named for Col. Stephen Watts Kearny, remained without, by saying either the War or Post Office Department had injected the letter even before the county was originated, probably over the confusion with Kearney City.
Main Page --- History Page
With permission from the author
While virtually all of Nebraska’s county seats originated in or were subsequently moved to the center of their constituencies, why does it not make sense to put the state capital and, while we're at it, the U. S. capital in Kearney?
Moving Nebraska’s capital was accomplished once and discussed several times subsequently.
What is seldom remembered, however, is that there was considerable effort expended in the 1860s and 1870s to relocate the District of Columbia to Buffalo County.
Moses Henry Sydenham was born in London in 1835. At the age of 9, he began working as a suspenders-maker for 4 cents a week, moving up to producing curtain fringe for 37.5 cents per week. He then worked for four years in a bindery, and when his father died, he became responsible for his entire family and began working for a printer. By 18, he was publishing a weekly newspaper.
Becoming a seaman in 1853, Sydenham traveled first to New York City, and on a subsequent trip landed at Savannah, Georgia, in 1856. Deciding that a life at sea was not for him, he began working his way up the Mississippi River, and, while working at the Kansas City Enterprise, caught what he described as “bilious fever.”
An agent of Russell, Majors & Waddell convinced him that he could do well working for them as a teamster and that outdoor work would cure the fever. His first trip west took him through Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie. On the return trip in February 1857, a blizzard stopped the party at Fort Kearny. It immediately was followed by a second snowstorm so dense that the sutler’s clerk lost his way going from the store to his quarters and was not found till spring by several Pawnee.
John Heth, the sutler, hired Sydenham to replace the clerk and the following year made him the fort postmaster as well.
With the organization of Kearney County the following year, Kearney City, located just west of the fort, was designated as the county seat, with Sydenham appointed as a county commissioner.
In 1862, Sydenham began publishing the Kearney Herald at the fort as the first newspaper in the county. About the same time the notion was born that Kearney City should be the capital of both Nebraska and the United States. In 1866, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman felt that the railroad’s arrival and subsequent settlement of the area made Fort Kearny redundant, but Sydenham convinced him that one company should be left to protect the area from the Sioux.
Sydenham, meanwhile, established a new paper, the Central Star, dedicated to moving the U.S. capital to the center of the country. He served as a delegate to the national capital removal convention in 1870 in Louisville, Kentucky. Sydenham’s proposal spoke of how much more secure from enemy attack a central capital would be, citing the War of 1812 as an example. There was plenty of empty land, 10 square miles on the Fort Kearny reservation alone, and all railroads would soon see the advantage to transportation and freight connections.
Rail transport would be supplemented by a system of canals with water furnished by the Platte River. He further suggested that he, as agent, could sell 64,000 sections of the reservation for enough money to build the new capitol and city with all amenities including vast park lands. He also projected that the entire program would “redeem the national debt within 10 years.”
Although it sounded foolproof, he reported that there were “too many representatives from too many places” for any individual proposal. The entire convention failed.
Sydenham was not idle. He ran for the state legislature in 1868, but claimed that he lost “because of a flood of illegal votes by cowboys from the west end of the state (and) political wire-working.” He contested the vote, but it stood.
Fort Kearny closed in 1871 and Sydenham moved his store to Kearney City, which he renamed Centoria. The St. Joseph & Denver City Railroad failed to reach the area, terminating at Hastings.
By 1878, the Union Pacific hired Sydenham as a mail clerk for the route between Omaha and Ogden, Utah. During his last years Sydenham lived in the new Kearney, to the north of the old fort and Centoria, and there established the Central Star of Empire, a paper promoting Christian ideals.
He explained how the new city of Kearney inherited the extra "e" at the end of its name, while the fort, named for Col. Stephen Watts Kearny, remained without, by saying either the War or Post Office Department had injected the letter even before the county was originated, probably over the confusion with Kearney City.
Main Page --- History Page