Dorchester Times: Journal Star Story Spotlights Saline County's Generosity

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Journal Star Story Spotlights Saline County's Generosity

Some on the Dorchester Times staff are in our 60s and 70s. As long as we can recall, Saline County has always been comprised of good-hearted, generous people.

Today's Lincoln Journal Star is spreading the word.

An article in today's paper shines a light on the story of Breauna Derr, a 14 year-old from Friend who was diagnosed last fall with a painful form of bone cancer.

Breauna is a big player in Saline County's 4-H club. At last week's Saline County Fair at Tuxedo Park in Crete, Breauna's brother showed her two market goats, her feeder calf and Ralph, an 18-month-old red roan shorthorn she’d bottle fed on her family’s acreage.

At the livestock auction at the fair, following the showing and the judging, something special occurred -- openly displaying the generosity and caring spirit of Saline County residents.

The Journal Star features a photo of Dorchester's Joel Weber, shown hugging Breauna at the auction. His eyes are rimmed in red. Weber runs a feed yard in Dorchester, and his two boys are in Breauna’s 4-H club, The Live Wires.

Weber also belongs to Exeter Feeders and Breeders -- a chapter of Nebraska Cattleman -- a group that set aside $500 to spend at the auction to help Breauna, according to the Journal Star.

Thanks to the Feeders and Breeders bid, Breauna's steer brought $3,500 on the auction, which far surpassed any of the sale prices from earlier in the day. Some of Breauna's fellow 4-Hers even donated their earnings to her cause.

But things really got weepy after the bidding ended, when folks started holding up $100 in cash, to add to the bid. And then more people, waving their hands and bid cards and more money.

“It was just a spur of the moment deal, all just bang bang,” said Randy Pryor, an extension educator at UNL’s Saline County Extension office.

“It was just unbelievable the number of people who stepped forward out of the sky blue,” said Bill Rut of Dorchester, the auctioneer.

All together, more than $8,000 was raised for Breauna's fight.

“I tell you what, we have an awesome county,” Breauna's mom, Kim Derr, said. “They are good people.”

Read the entire article here.

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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."