No. 28—Cadman Home south of State Hospital
Standing lonely on its hill this old house, doubtless one of the oldest in the region, is the only visible evidence of one of Lancaster county’s early and to be noticed citizens, John F. Cadman. As time has shorn him of earthly glory, so has it shorn the house of pretentious tower and galleries which graced it in its original elegance as manor house of Silver Lake farm. In those days it was embellished with laid-out garden and tree plots, even a fountain.
Mr. Cadman was a man of vigor and action. Coming to Lancaster in 1859, he entered a quarter section of land on Salt creek, south of Lincoln. His first move was to open a cut-off (from the Oregon Trail) from Nebraska City to Fort Kearny, which he completed in time for 1861 spring travel. This was of great benefit to farmers on the Salt and Blue. In addition to his farming operations he established a trading post at the point where the cut-off crossed Salt creek. The post was also a station for the Lusbaugh line of stages between Nebraska City and Fort Kearny, where they connected with overland stages to California. He served in the territorial legislature, also the state legislature, first term. In 1867 he was a leading advocate for removal of the capital to Lancaster county—only he wanted it at Yankee Hill, south of Lincoln.
An old biography of Mr. Cadman says proudly that he never drank a glass of liquor in his life, not indicating, we hope, that he was a rare exception to a general rule. All in all he was a hardy and to-be-relied-on citizen, a worthy rival of salty old Elder Young, who founded the town of Lancaster and used his influence to get the capitol into Lancaster’s successor, Lincoln, instead of at Yankee Hill, where John Cadman wanted it.
No. 29—Marker on Burlington Station
THE FOUNDING OF
LINCOLN
ON JULY 29 1867
IN SESSION AT
THE FRONTIER HOME OF
CAPT. W. T. DONOVAN
LOCATED 166 FEET NORTH
638 FEET EAST OF THIS SPOT
THE NEBRASKA STATE
CAPITAL COMMISSION
DAVID BUTLER, GOVERNOR
JOHN J. GILLESPIE, AUDITOR
THOMAS P. KENNARD
SEC’Y. OF STATE
LOCATED LINCOLN
CAPITAL CITY OF NEBRASKA
ON THIS PRAIRIE
ERECTED BY NEBRASKA SOCIETY
SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
JULY 29 1927
On a hot afternoon in July, 1867—the 29th—Commissioners Butler, Kennard and Gillespie emerged dripping from the attic of Captain W. T. Donovan’s house. Standing on its east side to avoid the blazing sun Butler announced that henceforth Lincoln would be the capital of Nebraska. The severely fashioned Donovan house stood at the northern point of a triangle which would have included the Journal building and the Burlington station had they been built at that time. Why the commissioners took to the attic to vote on the site is not certain, but possibly they did not want to be rudely interrupted by those who had been insisting that it be located at Ashland, Seward or Yankee Hill, or be left in Omaha.
Captain Donovan came to Lancaster county in the mid-fifties. Captain of the steamboat Emma, one of the boats which plied up the Missouri as far as Plattsmouth, he was drawn to this region by the possibilities of salt in the Salt creek valley. His son was the first white child born in the county, his daughter the first Lincoln bride. He took the first homestead in the county under the 1862 homestead law. He stuck to his claim during the Indian scare of 1864 and helped protect settlers who had the courage to remain. The tablet was erected by the Nebraska Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.