This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Hiatt, Bourne, Borchers Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/1609 Message Board Post: THE SIDNEY ARGUS - HERALD. September 12, 1929. "Another Early Settler."--Writing from Rushville, Nebraska, Mary L. Bourne, who has been a subscriber to The Argus practically since its first issue in July, 1916, says of early days: "Mr. Editor: I got my Argus-Herald Friday and read Mr. Hiatt's historical article in which he says he is the oldest living pioneer of Fremont county. I am just past 80, read and sew without glasses. The firm "Borchers & Bowers" of which he speaks should read Borchers & Bourne, the latter my father. "My father, Harvey Bourne, came to Fremont county from old Virginia in 1850, settled on a pre-emption west of the road between Hamburg and Sidney in what was called "the German settlement." He helped to lay out the town of Sidney and built the first frame house, just east of the square. I think it stands there now. The carpenters worked overtime to get the house done so my mother could have our Christmas dinner there, 1851. "The finishing lumber for this old house was brought across the Missouri bottom in boats on account of high water. Mr. Borchers built the house next to ours, south, in 1853. Mr. Borchers and Mr. Brumback laid out Hamburg about 1867 (sic, should read 1857). The names Mr. Hiatt mentions were all familiar to me in my childhood days in Sidney. "Mother, brother and I came to this wild and woolly west in 1887. We were about forty miles from the Sioux Indian reservation but they were not allowed off this reservation very much. At the battle of Wounded Knee we were all notified to seek safety in towns or in guarded places, but the Indians did not get to us. This country then was not considered suitable for anything but cattle; now we have fine farms,thriving dairy business and no hog cholera at all."