O'Neill, Nebraska

General John O'Neill

John O'Neill was born in County Monaghan, Ireland, in 1834 and came to America as a teenager in 1848, during the years of the Great Famine. He served in the U.S. Army and fought for the Union in the Civil War with an Indiana cavalry regiment, and later with a company of Black infantry troops.

After the war he became a leader in the Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish nationalist group that hoped to pressure Britain by striking at Canada. In June 1866 he led Fenian forces across the Niagara River and captured Fort Erie before pulling back. Later raids in 1870 and 1871 failed, and he was arrested and jailed. His admirers called him "General" for the rest of his life.

Once released, O'Neill turned to a new cause: helping poor Irish families leave crowded Eastern cities and mining towns for land of their own in the West. After touring several Midwestern states in 1872 and 1873, he decided Nebraska offered the best chance.

The Irish Colony on the Elkhorn

In November 1873 O'Neill met with Patrick Fahy, a land agent in Lincoln, about a townsite in Holt County. Early in 1874 he lectured to miners in Pennsylvania, and that spring he led a small first colony to the Elkhorn valley. The town of 160 acres was platted in May 1874. The newcomers lived at first in a single sod house about 36 by 18 feet, which they jokingly called the "Grand Central Hotel." Logs for cabins had to be hauled eighteen miles from Eagle Creek, and some colonists were so discouraged by the rough conditions that they left.

O'Neill went back East again and again for more settlers. A second group came in 1875, about a hundred more in 1876, and about seventy in 1877. The first frame building in town went up in October 1875. General O'Neill did not live to see the town grow much further; he died in Omaha on January 7, 1878.

Courthouse, Church and Railroad

The young town soon became the center of the county. In 1879 voters chose O'Neill over Paddock as county seat, and the records moved there that August. O'Neill was incorporated in 1882.

Faith was at the center of the Irish colony. Settlers began a small Catholic church in 1876, and the first Mass in it was said in July 1877. The parish soon outgrew it, and the old building became the town's first public school. The present St. Patrick's Catholic Church, in an early Romanesque Revival style, was built in 1910 and has changed little since. Father Edward J. Flanagan, who later founded Boys Town near Omaha, served his first parish assignment there in 1912. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.

The railroad reached O'Neill in 1881 as the line was pushed west up the Elkhorn valley. The town grew from just 57 people in the 1880 census to 1,226 in 1890. Rail service shaped O'Neill for over a century, until the Chicago and North Western line was abandoned in 1992. Its roadbed is now the Cowboy Trail.

What O'Neill Meant to Settlers

For families on the farms and ranches along the Elkhorn in the 1870s and 1880s, O'Neill was where you went to file a land claim or record a deed, pay taxes, sell cattle and grain, buy lumber and supplies, and see the doctor. It was a long wagon trip from many homesteads, so a visit to town was often a full day or more. The courthouse records kept there, such as deeds, marriages and probate files, remain one of the best places to trace families who lived anywhere in Holt County.

The Irish Capital Today

O'Neill held its first official St. Patrick's Day parade in 1967, and in 1969 Governor Norbert Tiemann proclaimed it the Irish Capital of Nebraska. St. Patrick's Day is still the town's biggest celebration. Since 2000 a large concrete shamrock has been set into the intersection at Fourth and Douglas streets and is repainted each year. In 2022 the town dedicated a statue of General O'Neill.

The 2020 census counted 3,581 people, making O'Neill the largest town in Holt County. It remains a trade and service center for a wide ranching and farming area.