John Bratt, Frontier County pioneer

The Civil War ended in 1865, and Nebraska achieved statehood in 1867, but our region, the Southwest portion of the new state, was already an important cattle raising district by that time. One of Nebraska's first cattle barons, a man who controlled the lives and fortunes of most of the white men who lived in the region, was a transplanted Englishman, who also spearheaded the creation of Frontier County.

John Bratt was born in 1842, in Stratford, England, the son of a poor, but proud, village minister. His father insisted that John should receive a good education (for that day), and when he was but 12 years old, he was apprenticed to a friend of the family, to learn the merchant's trade.

Somehow, from someone, John heard about life in far- off America. From that time on, the lad read everything he could lay his hands on, which concerned life in America, especially the "Wild West." Bratt later wrote about this period of his life, "The lure of America grew stronger by the day ... the home of the free and land of the brave, where one man was as good as another ... and where I would not be obliged to bow and doff my hat to the county squire and give him 3/4ths of the road."

In his 10 years of apprenticeship, Bratt had become quite successful in business in England, yet, at age 22 he sold out his business interests and took a ship to New York City, arriving in July of 1864. For the next two years, while the Americans finished settling their differences with the great Civil War, Bratt bounced around the U. S. -- in Chicago, New York, and New Orleans. When the Civil War ended, John Bratt found himself in Nebraska City, where he hired out to Captain Bass, the wagon master of a train of 22 ox-drawn wagons, headed for Fort Phil Kearny, in northern Wyoming.

In his memoirs, Bratt gives good descriptions of the Great Platte River Road, the Forts that were set up to protect travelers on this route, the Indians they encountered, the vast buffalo herds, and the unique resting places, called "road ranches," the forerunners of modern motor hotels (motels). One of these road ranches was operated by John Burke, whose daughter would become Mrs. John Bratt.

At Fort Phil Kearny, John went to work for Levi Carter, who held a government contract for cutting hay for the Army. This was an exciting time, as Bratt's hay cutting crew interspersed their hay cutting and hauling duties with fighting off persistent attacks by Indians, who saw the advances of the white men as a threat to their way of life.

In 1869 Bratt was sent back to Fort McPherson to fulfill a government haying contract for Mr. Carter. It was at this time that he entered into the ranching partnership with Carter and Coe. For the next 22 years, he participated in all phases of the fast-changing cattle business, from bringing up herds along the Texas Cattle Trail, to marketing the finished beef in Omaha and Chicago.

Though Lincoln County, the site of Carter-Coe-Bratt headquarters for ranching operations, had been organized in 1860, the western third of Nebraska was still mostly unorganized territory in 1872. Cattle from the Carter-Coe-Bratt operation fed on the open range all the way to the borders of Colorado and Wyoming, but times were changing.

People, mainly farmers, were beginning to settle land in Southwest Nebraska and John Bratt was anxious to secure grazing land south of the Platte River, some 50 miles distant from North Platte, for his cattle operation. To this end he led the movement to organize a new County -- Frontier County, which would be friendly to cattlemen.

On Jan. 18, 1872, there was urgency to get the new county organized. In his journal John Bratt wrote, "The night was bitter cold, with snow on the ground. The organization had to take place at the site of the proposed new county seat, Stockville, fifty miles distant, before six o'clock the following morning. During the long hurried night journey, one of the intended officials of the new county was almost fatally injured in a buckboard accident, but nevertheless the organization was completed on time, in the tipi of a squaw man, Henry Clifford. In order to fill all the required county offices it was necessary to recruit about every white men living in the designated area."

Bratt proved to be a fair-minded and progressive leader in the new county. He was one of the pioneers in organizing livestock organizations, locally, and on the state level. These organizations were needed to formulate workable range rules and to control thieving and other problems for the cattlemen on their far-flung herds.

Among these "other" problems were Indians. Mr. Bratt related in the winter of 1872, "Small thieving bands of Sioux had killed, not for the meat, but for pure, unadulterated meanness, several hundred head of our range cattle, all because they did not happen to run across any buffalo." A $13,000 claim against the government to atone for the destruction by the Indians was paid to Mr. Bratt, which was later denied. Lawyers maintained that because of the hard winter, the Indians had slaughtered the animals to ward off starvation. Bratt was required to pay back the $13,000.

The wars between the U.S. Army and the Indians soon eliminated the Indian problem for the cattlemen, leaving them free to develop the open range into one of the greatest cattle empires in history. But their reign was short-lived. In a span of about 20 years, just as the Indians had given way to the cattlemen, so too, did the cattlemen give way to the homesteaders, with their plows and barbed wire fences.

In time much of the homesteaded land in Southwest Nebraska proved to be unfit for farming, and big ranches would again take over much of the that land, but with fences and new range management. The days of the open range were gone forever.

John Bratt was a realist, and a fellow who could adapt to the times. Accordingly, around the turn of the new century, Bratt, at the very height of success in his cattle operation, left the ranching business and moved, with his wife and four daughters, to a large and comfortable new home in North Platte, where he opened an insurance, real estate, and loan business. The business was a success, but John was something of an anomaly in North Platte, which was known as a gaudy, bawdy, loose town -- saloons and gambling were open and widespread. Taxes were soaring. John Bratt was successful, and conservative. He didn't drink, or smoke, or swear, or gamble.

Some folks in North Platte saw in Bratt a man who might get North Platte back on track as a "model" town, or "at least one where upright citizens would not risk stumbling over drunks on the street or watch debauchery of their young people."

At the insistence of his friends John Bratt ran for and was elected Mayor of North Platte. He served two terms and was privileged to look back on his tenure in office "with some degree of satisfaction ... The city's debts have been paid, taxes reduced, streets improved, gambling done away with (openly anyway), and hoodlum gangs broken up."

In 1922 John Bratt had retired and was taking life easy in his comfortable city home. He had time to look back on his life, of adventure, and achievement, and had recorded his memories of the early days in several important books. He was busy working on his memoirs, of a life well lived, when he suffered a fatal seizure. He was in his 80th year.

Source: Frontier County Historical Society records.