John M. Young, Lincoln’s founder -- 4/20/2008

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By Jim McKee/For the Lincoln Journal Star

   John M. Young was born Nov. 25, 1806, near Batavia in Genesee County, N.Y.

   In 1829, he married 18-year-old Alice Watson and moved to Ohio, where he became a Methodist Protestant minister and president of the church’s Ohio conference. He lived in Iowa, also, and arrived at Nebraska City in 1860, where he established a storefront Methodist church and began raising funds to erect a proper church building. When funds were not forthcoming, the society disbanded.

   On July 4, 1863, Rebecca Cox and her husband, William, were gathering wild gooseberries along Salt Creek near their cabin when they ran into Young and four men from Nebraska City. The party was examining land around the Lancaster County salt flats for a potential site for a Methodist female seminary or academy.

   Young’s group was invited back to the Cox home, where they joined other neighbors in celebrating Independence Day. As Young had brought along a U.S. flag, it was unfurled, perhaps the first flag displayed in Lancaster County. Young then gave an extemporaneous talk on the flag and patriotism.

   The committee came back the next Saturday and announced a decision to locate in the vicinity of the salt flats. The land chosen, primarily in Section 23, was to be purchased from Julian Metcalf within a month. The next day, Young preached what has been referred to as the first sermon “in the locality,” at the Cox home.

   Thereafter, religious meetings were held frequently under Young “and other ministers who chanced to stray so far into the wilderness.”

   That summer, Young’s Methodist Colony settled on the site of what would become the village of Lancaster and later the city of Lincoln.

   Young started many of his projects that summer, including initial construction of the Salt Creek Mission’s female seminary, which sat just north of what is now the northeast corner of Ninth and P streets.

   The first district school also was organized, and Young built his home east of about 18th and P streets.

   With other projects well in place and his sons settled, Young perfected the village of Lancaster’s plat and “set out to capture the county seat of Lancaster County.”

   When John Cadman of Yankee Hill/Saline City engineered the dissolution of Clay County in July 1864, increasing Lancaster County’s area by 50 percent, he also snubbed Olathe’s chances of being the county seat. Young took advantage of this and was largely responsible for Lancaster winning the prize.

   Also that summer, Young happened to be in Nebraska City to meet his son who was arriving by steamboat for a Civil War furlough. On board the same ship was John Gillespie, a friend of Young’s and then Territorial Auditor.

   Young told Gillespie he was living at Lancaster, where “I am founding colony … and building a female seminary. We will soon have the county seat, and have the capital there.”

   Gillespie, who would later be on the Capital Commission and actually choose Lancaster for Nebraska’s capital, thought at the time that Young was either a visionary or sponsoring an absurdity.

   When 10 acres of Luke Lavender’s land was chosen for the capitol grounds, he was reimbursed with 10 acres of Young’s land, which adjoined to the east, and when state land was auctioned to finance the new state in September 1867, the auction was called from Young’s roof by “Col.” George Skinner.

   Young began raising funds to build a stone Methodist Protestant Church on the northwest corner of 12th and K streets, contributing $8,000 to $10,000 of his own money. The building, portions of which survived into the 1980s, was completed, but the Methodist Protestant Church was waning and the structure never actually served as a church.

   Disillusioned with the lack of success for both the seminary and church, Young moved to London, Nemaha County, five miles northwest of Brownville.

   He died there on Feb. 23, 1884, and was buried at Wyuka Cemetery. Two of his four sons, Levi and John, lived in Lincoln at the time.

   Listed in the top eight Methodist ministers during Nebraska’s first half century, “Elder J.M. Young was [eulogized as] a man of great enterprise, very large mind and possessed of a warm heart … an antagonist whom most men could well afford to respect.”

   Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.com.