1882 Talmage, Nebraska 1982

Archibald Alexander Talmage, the railroad man behind the town's name, was born in Warren County, New Jersey, on April 25, 1834, the son of a Presbyterian minister. He started at fifteen in a country store in Goshen, New York, clerked in the Erie's freight department at eighteen, and worked west through Chicago, Toledo and St. Louis as clerk, trainmaster and conductor. He rose to manage the Wabash and later the Wabash Western. On June 28, 1887, bound for a yachting cruise on Lake Erie, he collapsed in his private car, the Bergen Point, and died at Peru, Indiana.

What the plaque says

1882 Talmage, Nebraska 1982 This area of the Little Nemaha Valley was settled in the late 1850's and early 1860's. Many settlers were Northern European immi- grants. By 1881, the Missouri Pacific R.R. had begun constructing its Kansas City-Omaha line through the area. The townsite was platted March 7, 1882, in a former cornfield donated by Clark Puffer, and named for Archibald A. Talmage, Superintendent of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Talmage's location on the railroad made it a good shipping point for agri- cultural and mercantile products. Talmage Centennial Committee Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park — 13 mi
  J. Sterling Morton's estate in Nebraska City, a four-room house of 1855 grown to 52 rooms among the trees he planted, home of the man who proposed Arbor Day in 1872.
• Brownville — 21 mi
  A Missouri River town of 1854 that bet on a railroad and lost, kept its arts through the decline, and now has Nebraska's oldest repertory theatre and a 1932 steam dredge on the bank.

More markers nearby

• Cook — 7.7 mi
• French Settlement of Julian — 8.0 mi
• U.S. Air Force Atlas Missile Site — 11 mi
• Nebraska City — 13 mi