Townsley-Murdock Immigrant Trail Site

W. G. Eldridge located in Hall County on May 20, 1859, on the northeast quarter of section 14, town 10, lange 11. The country was then decidedly sparsely settled. The nearest neighbors on the west were eight miles away. Buffalo, deer, antelope, wolves, and Indians roamed over the vast treeless plains with wild freedom, undaunted by the approach of any white neighbors. A few hundred Indians camping near Mr. Eldridge's humble habitation was not an unusual occurrence. He erected the first dwelling in the fall of 1859. Mr. Eldridge, the father of the Alda community, was a native of Lafayette, Indiana, born on December 23, 1882. He moved to Middleport, Illinois, at the age of twenty-one and carried on a harness shop until 1856. He went to Kansas then and without any permanent place of settlement traded ponies and horse with Indians and whites alike. Returning to Indiana in the winter of 1858, he stayed only long enough to get started for Nebraska in March, 1859. He was married in Hall County, in the fall of 1860 to Miss S. S. Shinton, a native of England. They had five children, Annie E. who became the wife of Warren Winslow, Jessie N., Mary I., Jasper J., and Fannie A.

Passage source: History of Hall County, Nebraska; a Narrative of the Past with Special Emphasis Upon the Pioneer Period of the County's History, and Chronological Presentation of Its Social, Commercial, Educational, Religious, and Civic Development from the Early Days to the Present Time, and Special Analysis of Its Military and Civil Participation in the Late World War, published 1920.

Squire Lamb came to this part of the country in 1858. The Reese family came in 1860. In the meantime John Thomssen, one of the thirty-five members of the colony which settled near Grand Island in 1857, was married in 1860 to the one single lady who had ac- companied the original colony to Hall County. During the year 1860 this bridal couple setteled down and became pioneers of the present Alda township. Mr. and Mrs. N. V. Hansen settled on a place adjoining the Thomssen's. Other very early settlers were John Ring and two sons, John House and family, the Hann family, Henry Gam, and Charles and Arthur Lamberson. Francis Corkins came from Illinois to this part of Hall County in the fall of 1867. He worked through that neighborhood until 1875, then was married to Miss Harriet E. Smith and took a soldier's homestead.

Passage source: History of Hall County, Nebraska; a Narrative of the Past with Special Emphasis Upon the Pioneer Period of the County's History, and Chronological Presentation of Its Social, Commercial, Educational, Religious, and Civic Development from the Early Days to the Present Time, and Special Analysis of Its Military and Civil Participation in the Late World War, published 1920.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Alda Township - 2,439 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.