Tag: Surveying

Gold Rush Roulette: Byers and Kellom’s Gamble on Frontier Fortune

It’s time for a tale that’ll knock your socks off faster than a mule kick to the britches! William N. Byers and John H. Kellom decided to cash in on the gold fever sweeping the nation and penned the ultimate guide for fortune seekers: “Hand Book To the Gold Fields of Nebraska and Kansas.” They…
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February 19, 2025
Byers was not merely “involved” with claim clubs – he was up to his eyeballs in these quasi-legal cesspools of frontier justice!

Here we attempt to unravel the tangled web of William N. Byers and his dalliances with those frontier bastions of vigilante justice known as claim clubs! Are we to believe that Byers, the first deputy surveyor of Nebraska Territory, a man who could smell a land grab from a hundred miles away, somehow managed to…
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February 18, 2025
William N. Byers – The NEBRASKA years (1854-1859)

William Byers didn’t just become the first deputy surveyor in Nebraska Territory – he carved that godforsaken wilderness into a semblance of civilization with nothing but his wits and a rusty transit! This cartographic conquistador didn’t just create the first official plat of Omaha – he birthed a city from the very soil! Don’t think…
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February 18, 2025
William N. Byers – The OHIO and IOWA Years (1831 – 1854)

William Newton Byers, that paragon of pioneer pluck, burst forth from his mother’s womb on February 22, 1831, in West Jefferson, Madison County, Ohio. This wasn’t just any birth – it was a cosmic event that would shape the very fabric of the American West! His parents, Moses Watson Byers and Mary Ann Brandenburg, weren’t your…
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February 18, 2025