Auburn, Nebraska: Two Old Towns Under One Name
Auburn, Nebraska, started as two towns a mile apart, Sheridan and Calvert. When they joined in 1882, a landowner from New York gave them one new name.
A railroad that missed by a mile
Sheridan came first. Lilian Fitzpatrick, writing in 1925, says the Lincoln Land Company platted it in 1869. Then, in 1881, the Burlington and Missouri railroad “missed by a mile the old inland town of Sheridan and platted a new town which was called Calvert.” A year later another railroad, the Missouri Pacific, came through Sheridan. Now there were two towns, each with its own tracks, sitting right next to each other.
Two names you won’t find anymore
The old names had their own stories. A. T. Andreas’s 1882 state history and the City of Auburn both say Sheridan honored General Phil Sheridan and Calvert honored Thomas E. Calvert, a railroad official.
Why “Auburn”
Fitzpatrick says Church Howe and Charles D. Nixon, of Oswego, New York, owned land along the Missouri Pacific and pushed to move the county courthouse halfway between the two towns. Once they’d done that, they decided to bring the towns together under one name. “Mr. Nixon suggested the name Auburn after Auburn, New York (which was near his former home),” and both the post office and the railroads took it up.
The city’s history dates the joint incorporation to May 1, 1882, and the move of the Nemaha County seat to February 27, 1883. So the name you see today belonged to neither old town: not Sheridan, not Calvert, but a city near where one of the founders used to live.
Sources & further reading
- Lilian Linder Fitzpatrick, Nebraska Place-Names (University of Nebraska, 1925). A public-domain book that goes county by county. Sheridan, Calvert and Nixon’s choice.
- City of Auburn, “History of Auburn.” The 1882 incorporation, the county seat and the old names.
- A. T. Andreas, History of the State of Nebraska (1882), Nemaha County. Sheridan and Calvert.
- GNIS feature 827116 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Auburn. Incorporated 1882; county seat 1883; named after Auburn, New York.
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