Quick Facts
Biography
Stephen A. Decatur (born 1813, died 1888 or 1889), born Stephen Decatur Bross and often referred to as Commodore Decatur, was one of the earliest settlers in Nebraska. He was the namesake and one of the incorporators of Decatur, Nebraska, the second-oldest settlement in Nebraska.
He was born in Sussex County, New Jersey, one of eleven children of Moses Bross and Jane Winfield Bross. He attended Williams College during the 1830s, rooming with his twin brother William, who later became Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. Stephen became a schoolteacher under the name Stephen Decatur Bross in New Jersey and New York. In the early 1840s he suddenly disappeared, abandoning a wife and two children.
He next surfaced in the Nebraska Territory under the name Stephen Decatur. While on the Nebraska frontier he served in the Mexican-American War. He arrived in what is now the Decatur area from Bellevue in 1841 and made his home with the Omaha tribe. He lived on a farm which was called "Decatur Springs," named for a spring of pure water found there which supplied water to the town for the next century. Later he was a clerk at Sarpy's trading post, which opened in 1854. In 1854 he was a candidate to serve in Nebraska's First Territorial Assembly, but he was not seated. He has been described as a "highly educated man who claimed he was a nephew of Commodore Stephen Decatur, Naval hero of the War of 1812."
The town of Decatur was incorporated in 1856 under the name "The Decatur Townsite & Ferry Company." The other incorporators included Thomas Whiteacre, T. H. Hineman, George Mason, and Herman Glass. The patents for the town were granted on May 1, 1862.
In 1859 Decatur moved to the Colorado Territory to work in the gold fields, leaving behind a second wife and child. During the American Civil War he enlisted in the 3rd Colorado Regiment. After the war he remained in Colorado, including a stint in Georgetown, Colorado where he published the Georgetown Miner. Later he moved to Summit County, Colorado, which he represented in the territorial legislature from 1866 to 1868. He died June 3, 1888 in Rosita, Colorado, a small camp in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains; his age at death was estimated to be 80. He is buried in Rosita Cemetery in Custer County, Colorado.
