Dorchester Times: NEWS BRIEFS: Dorchester Students & Scholars Earn Honors

Thursday, November 20, 2008

NEWS BRIEFS: Dorchester Students & Scholars Earn Honors

DHS Takes Fifth Place At UNL Math Day: DHS students solidified their school's reputation for excellence in mathematics with a top five finish at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's 19th-annual Math Day last week. UNL's Math Day brings together hundreds of students from across Nebraska. The event consists of two individual and two team mathematics competitions. All students started with a multiple-choice preliminary exam called PROBE I ( Problems Requiring Original and Brilliant Effort ). In Class D, the top five teams in PROBE I were: Nebraska Evangelical Lutheran 50.0, College View Academy 49.33, Bertrand 49.0, Heartland Homeschoolers 48.67, Dorchester 43.33. Dorchester was the only Saline County school to place at UNL Math Day.

Longhorns Named To All-District Football Squads: District D1-2 football coaches have named Logan Morris to the all-district second team offense, while Spencer Kotas has received honorable mention. Brandon Bruha has been named to the all-district first team defense, with Morris named to the second team defense and Kotas again receiving honorable mention. Bruha has also been named all-district first team punter.

Lady Longhorns Recognized by CRC: DHS junior Karmen Lawver was recently named to the Crossroads Conference first team all-conference volleyball team, while senior Wendy Boller was recognized as an honorable mention recipient.

Rev. Roger Wolfe Makes Front Page Of Lincoln Journal Star: We at the Times were impressed a couple of weeks ago when we saw the face of Dorchester resident Rev. Roger Wolfe grace the front page of the Nov. 12 edition of the Lincoln Journal Star. Rev. Wolfe, who is chaplain of the American Legion Dist. 11, spoke at this month's Veterans Day program at Milford High School. One local reader who heard Rev. Wolfe's speech told the Times: "I wish I could have recorded it. He never says the same thing twice because he speaks from the heart and captures what he observes and hears from those surrounding him at the moment."

2 comments:

AnonymousNovember 21, 2008 at 11:42 AM
Nice going Dorchester students! By the way, has there been any talk of starting a Dorchester Football Alumni group to rebuild the program? I know we have the booster club but I think it would be great if former Dorchester players could specifically give money to a fund that was to be spent on the football program since it costs the most to operate.
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AnonymousNovember 23, 2008 at 4:49 PM
Math department at DHS has been solid since the days of Rob Shultz!
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Dorchester: A Good Little Family Town

Dorchester, Nebraska (est. population 630) is located in northern Saline county. Close in proximity to Interstate 80, Dorchester is only 25 minutes from the state capital of Lincoln (est. population 250,000) and about 55 minutes from Omaha (metro population 725,000).

Dorchester's median resident age is 37 years. In 2005, Dorchester had a median family income of approximately $35,600. The median house value was about $63,000. About 95 percent of Dorchester residents commute to work via Interstate and highways.

The village has a quality public school, which received a $4.1 million expansion and modernization in 2008; it offers a small classrooms and individualized attention. Total enrollment of grades K-12 is around 230-250 students.

Ancestries of the Dorchester area are primarily German (42.4%), Czech (24.9%), Irish (12.5%), English (5.4%), and Dutch (4.9%).

Dorchester Historical Facts

* On July 4, 1871, the railroad reached Dorchester.
* Incorporated in 1881, Dorchester's population grew from 200 to 500 by 1882.
* In 1882, Dorchester had 90 buildings, 35 of which were businesses or public facilities. Brick buildings lined both sides of Washington Avenue for two blocks.
* Dorchester's longest-running newspaper was The Dorchester Star, which was published until the late 1940s.
* By 1889, Dorchester's population is said to have reached 800, while the town housed an opera house, a two-story brick schoolhouse with a bell tower, and four churches.
* By the 1910s, Dorchester had electricity, a water tower and a fire department.
* Dorchester's main arteries, Highways 6 and 33, were graveled in the 1940s.
* Dorchester's first irrigation well was drilled on Chris Weber's farm and rural electrification was finished following WWII.

A Village with History

Dorchester is one of the "alphabet towns" on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line built west from Lincoln. The town site was selected for its pleasant location in the northern part of Saline County, about eight miles west of Crete. This situation is an attractive one, being on the level prairie land, midway between the West Blue River and Turkey Creek. The first named stream is three miles north, and the latter about the same distance south from the town. Dorchester was platted in 1870 and incorporated in 1881. The name "Dorchester" came from either for a suburb of Boston by that name or a town in England. No one is sure. Two of the very first settlers were James Seely and Edward McIntyre, who both made Dorchester their permanent home.

Dorchester: In The Beginning

Here is a look at Dorchester around 1890, less than a decade after its official incorporation, as documented by Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska:
* POPULATION: "About 300, and is made up of a substantial and progressive class of citizens, who are moral and industrious. ... The town grew but very little until the year 1879, for the reason that Pleasant Hill, on Turkey Creek, a short distance south, was the county seat and naturally drew a trade for quite a large scope of country."
* BUSINESS: "The business and professional interests of the town are represented by three general merchandise stores, two drug, one grocery, one furniture, two hardware, and two millinery stores, one bank, two restaurants, two hotels, three livery stables, a post office, one newspaper office, two elevators, two lumber yards, two coal yards, two blacksmith shops, two lawyers and four physicians."
* SCHOOL: "The schoolhouse is a good one. The schoolhouse was built in 1872, since which time the public schools have been continually kept up. The present schoolhouse is 24' x 40' in size, two stories high. The school is graded and consists of three departments. The house is found too small, and arrangements will soon be made to increase its size."
* CHURCHES: "There are three substantial churches."
* HOMES: "The residence portion of the village is made up of neat houses of different styles of architecture, but none of them very large."
* NEWSPAPER: "The Dorchester Star, which was established August 21, 1881, by H. C. Bittenbender, who edited it until January 19, 1882, when he sold it to Ryerson & Bullock, the present proprietors. The Star is a bright weekly paper, five-column quarto, in size, and is Republican in politics."