Decatur, Nebraska
Decatur is a village in Burt County, Nebraska, United States, adjacent to the upper Missouri River. The population was 481 at the 2010 census. This town is named after one of its incorporators, Stephen Decatur. It developed around a trading post established by Colonel Peter Sarpy, the namesake for Sarpy County in the state. History The area was long occupied by the Omaha Native Americans, who settled along the creeks and river Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark passed through the area in 1804 as their expedition traveled via the upper Missouri River on their way to and from the Pacific Coast, in their exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. The first European settler in the area was a man named Woods, who settled at the mouth of Wood Creek (his namesake) in 1837. Stephen Decatur arrived in the area in 1841. A former schoolteacher in New Jersey and New York, he had abandoned his wife and two children when he migrated to the West. Here he changed his name, dropping his former surname of "Bross." His farm was called Decatur Springs, after a spring which supplied water to the village for the next century. In 1854, the U.S. Commissioner of