Stuart at the opening of 1880 was an almost untouched prairie spot, 219 miles from Missouri Valley, Iowa; but in July, 1880, Mr. John Carberry brought his family from Atkinson, and they had a "Fourth" all to themselves on their newly taken homestead, which now forms a part of the town plat, surveyed in the fall of '81; at that time having but two occupants, Carberry and Halleck. In November, the same year, the first train puffed into the new town of Stuart, so named, in honor of Peter Stuart, a Scotchman living on a homestead adjoining the town-site on the south. Reader, do you know how an oil town is built up? Well, the building up of a town along the line of a western railroad that opens up a new, rich country, is very much the same. One by one they gather at first, until the territory is tested, then in numbers, coming from everywhere. But the soil of Nebraska is more lasting than the hidden sea of oil of Pennsylvania, so about the only difference is that the western town is permanent. Temporary buildings are quickly erected at first, and then the substantial ones when time and money are more plenty. So "stirring Stuart" gathered, until we now count one church (Pres.), which was used for a school room last winter, two hotels, two general stores, principal of which is Mr. John Skirving, two hardware and farm implement stores, one drug store, two lumber yards, a harness and blacksmith shop, and a bank. Not far from Stuart, I am told, was an Indian camping ground, which was visited but two years ago by about a hundred of them, "tenting again on the old camp ground." And I doubt not but that the winding Elkhorn has here looked on wilder scenes than it did on the morning of the 27th of April, '83, when the little party of 65 colonists stepped down and out from their homes in the old "Keystone" into the "promised land," and shot at the telegraph pole, and missed it. But I will not repeat the story of the first chapter. Now that the old year of '83 has fled since the time of which I have written, I must add what improvements, or a few at least, that the lapse of time has brought to the little town that can very appropriately be termed "the Plymouth rock of the N.M.A.C."