In the fall of 1868 my brother, W. G. McDowell, and I started from Fairbury, Illinois, for Nebraska. Arriving at Brownville, we were compelled to take a stage for Beatrice, as the only railroad in the state was the Union Pacific. Brownville was a little river village, and Tecumseh was the only town between Brownville and Beatrice. It probably had one hundred inhabitants. There was only one house between it and Beatrice. The trip from Brownville to Beatrice took two days with a night stop at Tecumseh. The scenery consisted of rolling prairie covered with buffalo grass, and a few trees along the banks of Rock creek. We stopped for dinner at a house a few miles northeast of the present site of Endicott, where the Oregon trail stages changed horses. On our arrival at Beatrice we found a little village of about three hundred inhabitants. The only hotel had three rooms: a reception room, one bedroom with four beds--one in each corner--and a combination dining-room and kitchen. There was a schoolhouse fourteen by sixteen feet, but there were no churches. We bought a few town lots, entered two or three sections of land, and decided to build a stone hotel, as there was plenty of stone along the banks of the Blue river, and in the water. We then took a team and spring-wagon and started to find a location for a county-seat for Jefferson county. We found the land where Fairbury is now located was not entered, so we entered it with the intention of making it the county-seat. On our return to Beatrice we let the contract for the stone hotel, which still stands today. We returned to Illinois, but the following February of 1869 I came back to look after the building of the hotel. I bought a farm with buildings on it, and began farming and improving the land I had entered. In the summer of 1869 my brother came out again, and we drove over to lay out the county-seat of Jefferson county, which we named after Fairbury, Illinois, with the sanction of the county commissioners. We shipped the machinery for a sawmill to Waterville, Kansas, and hauled it to Fairbury with teams. Judge Mattingly bought it and sawed all the lumber that was used for building around Fairbury. Armstrong Brothers started a small store in a shack. About 1870, I came over from Beatrice and built the first store building, on the east side of the square, which was replaced a few years ago by the J. D. Davis building. The Fairbury Roller Mill was built in 1873 by Col. Andrew J. Cropsey. I bought his interest in 1874 and have had it ever since. In 1880 I came to make my home in Fairbury and have watched its steady growth from its beginning, to our present thriving and beautiful little city of 1915. EARLY EXPERIENCES IN NEBRASKA BY ELIZABETH PORTER SEYMOUR In the spring of 1872, we came from Waterloo, Iowa, to Plymouth, Nebraska. My husband drove through, and upon his arrival I came by train with my young brother and baby daughter four months old.