About Grafton
Grafton is a village in Fillmore County, in south-eastern Nebraska. The 2020 census counted 107 residents. The village covers about a third of a square mile at an elevation near 1,680 feet.
History
The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad put in a siding here in the early 1870s, five miles from the earlier settlement at Fillmore City. C. M. Northrup built a flour mill on the West Blue River in 1872 and a warehouse at the siding soon after. The railroad had already abandoned a townsite called Grafton over in Clay County, and it moved the name here. The town dates from 1874, and the depot was finished in 1875. One account traces the name back to Grafton, Massachusetts. It also fits the alphabetical run of Burlington stops heading west from Lincoln, alongside Crete, Dorchester, Exeter and Fairmont.
Later years
George Warren built a steam-powered elevator here in 1880 with room for 20,000 bushels of grain. J. O. Chase organised a bank in the spring of 1881 and went on to found Chase National Bank in New York. The village had roughly 500 people by the mid-1880s. It has been smaller ever since.
Visitor & Travel Categories
Business & Economic Categories
Grafton is a village in northern Fillmore County, platted in 1874 as one of three towns -- along with Exeter and Fairmont -- named in alphabetical sequence by the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad as it built its line westward. Grafton's name is thought to honor Grafton, Massachusetts, though sources describe the connection as likely rather than definitively documented. With a 2020 population of just 107, Grafton is one of the smallest and least-documented towns in the county; no significant notable residents or landmarks turned up in available historical records. It remains, like several of its neighbors, a small agricultural community shaped primarily by the railroad that founded it.
Grafton's history is thinner in the historical record than some of its Fillmore County neighbors, but its place within the alphabetically-named string of railroad towns -- Exeter, Fairmont, Grafton -- is a clear, documented piece of the county's settlement pattern.