St. Edward

The priest the town honors landed in New York from France on September 13, 1841. Edward Sorin, born in 1814 at Ahuillé near Laval, reached South Bend with seven brothers on November 26, 1842, where Alexis Coquillard welcomed them and put them up that first night. When fire destroyed Notre Dame's Main Building on April 23, 1879, Sorin willed the school to rebuild, and a new Administration Building went up that summer. He was Superior General of the Congregation of Holy Cross from 1868 until his death at Notre Dame on October 31, 1893.

What the plaque says

St. Edward For more than ten thousand years the Beaver Valley and surrounding prairie, with their abundant water and wildlife, nurtured Native Americans. The Pawnee Indians, whose permanent earthlodge villages were a few miles to the south, claimed this area for hunting, fishing, and trapping. On August 14, 1871, A.T. Coquillard, president of the St. Edward Land and Immigration Company of South Bend, Indiana, purchased 320 acres from the Union Pacific Railroad. A townsite called "Beaver City" was surveyed, but remained mostly undeveloped as settlement slowed during the grasshopper plagues of the mid-1870s. Beaver post office was established in 1872 at the sod house of Capt. Robert Hardy, one of the first settlers. In 1874 the post office was moved to the west side of Beaver Creek and the settlement was renamed Waterville. The building of a grist mill in 1876-77 attracted settlers and businesses. The present townsite was platted and named St. Edward in honor of Rev. Edward Sorin, founder of Notre Dame University. St. Edward was incorporated October 6, 1884. It is the only town so named in the United States. St. Edward FCCLA/FHA and Community Foundation Nebraska State Historical Society, 1998

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Genoa U.S. Indian School Museum — 11 mi
  The surviving trades building of a federal boarding school that ran from 1884 to 1934 on the Pawnee Nation's last Nebraska land, where at least 86 children died and the cemetery is still lost.

More markers nearby

• West Hill Community — 7.7 mi
• Genoa: 1857-1859 — 11 mi
• Pawnee — 11 mi
• The Zimmerers - Irrigation Innovators — 13 mi