About Marquette
Marquette is a village in Hamilton County, in south central Nebraska. It covers about 0.21 square miles and stands at roughly 1,820 feet above sea level. The population was 236 at the 2020 census, up slightly from 229 in 2010. Aurora is about nine miles south, and Central City, in Merrick County, is about seven miles north. Grand Island lies about eighteen miles west.
History
The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad reached this part of the county in the spring of 1880, at first serving a post office called Avon. The Lincoln Land Company surveyed and platted Marquette in 1882, on 100 acres secured from J. W. Marquis. Post office records place a Marquette office as early as 1881. The village was incorporated on 2 March 1889. Fires in 1906 and 1910 destroyed frame buildings on Main Street, which were rebuilt in brick.
The name
The town was named for Thomas M. Marquette of Lincoln, a member of the Lincoln Land Company who was then general attorney for the Burlington railroad.
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Marquette grew from an earlier post office called Avon after the Lincoln Land Company platted the townsite in 1882 along a new Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line; the post office was renamed Marquette that December, and the village was incorporated in 1889. The town honors a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad attorney named Marquett(e) — sources differ on his exact first name. Marquette is the birthplace of psychologist J. P. Guilford, known for his influential research on human creativity.
A Hamilton County village named for a CB&Q Railroad attorney; birthplace of psychologist J. P. Guilford.