Stephen A. Decatur (born 1813, or 1889 was one of the earliest settlers in Nebraska. He was born and educated in the East, where he became a school teacher and started a family.
After having abandoned his wife and two children in New York in the 1840s, Bross moved west to Nebraska Territory. For the rest of his life, he used the name "Stephen Decatur." He was the namesake and one of the incorporators of Decatur, Nebraska, the second-oldest European-American settlement in Nebraska. He gained his nickname of "Commodore Decatur" by claiming to be a nephew of the Naval hero of the War of 1812.
Decatur married again in Nebraska. In 1859 he abandoned his second wife and their child when he moved to Colorado Territory, where he lived in various towns for the remainder of his life. He served a term in the Colorado territorial legislature from 1866 to 1868, after the American Civil War.
Biography
Decatur was born in Sussex County, New Jersey, They both attended Williams College during the 1830s, and roomed together. William also later went West, settling in Chicago, Illinois. He was later active in the Republican Party and elected as lieutenant governor.
Stephen became a schoolteacher under the name Stephen Decatur Bross in New Jersey and New York. In the early 1840s he suddenly disappeared, abandoning his wife and two children.
He next surfaced in Nebraska Territory, where he used the name Stephen Decatur. While on the Nebraska frontier, he served in the Mexican–American War.
Later Decatur worked as a clerk at the trading post of Colonel Peter Sarpy, who had numerous posts in Nebraska affiliated with the American Fur Company. The one in Decatur opened in 1854. Sarpy was also important to early Nebraska development, attracting residents and settlement near such posts. In 1854 Decatur was a candidate to serve in Nebraska's First Territorial Assembly, but he was not seated.<!-- Did this mean he was not elected, or was there another issue? --> 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."