Clark County, Indiana - Chapter 2: Early History of Clark County Before Organization, 1909

From the discoveries of Robert Cavelier Sieur de la Salle and the earlier voyage of the Jesuit Fathers Charemonot and Breboeiif, France claimed all of the Indiana, Ohio and Illinois country as early as the seventeenth century. The Iroc|uois nation also claimed it, but France was an aggressive power, and the wars of the Indians against her encroachments availed nothing. At the treaty of Utrecht, April ii, 1713, Louis XIV renounced in favor of England all claims except those to the St. Lawrence and Mississippi valleys. Both nations claimed the region west of the Alleghany ^Mountains, along the Ohio river, and the resultant squabble was that war known as the French and Indian war, 1754 to 1763. The Treaty of Paris ended this war and Indiana, togedicr with all of the other territory east of the Mississippi claimed by France, ^vas ceded to England. This territory, of which Clark county was a part, thus passed to the rule of the British nation, to remain a colony until the war of the Revolution was terminated by the Treaty of Paris, September 3, 1783. In the year of 1766 the British parliament insisted upon the Ohio river as the southwestern boundary and the Mississippi river as the western limit of the dominions of the English crown in this quarter. By this measure the entire northwest, or so much of it as afterwards became the Northwest Territory, was attached to the Province of Quebec, and the tract that now constitutes the state of Indiana was nominally under its local administration.

Virginia began to lay early claim to the vast area beyond her western border, but government was still nominal, and the few white settlers and Indians were generally a law unto themselves. In 1769 Virginia, acting upon the authority of her royal grants, by an enactment, extended her jurisdiction over all the territory northwest of the Ohio river, and by that act the county of Botetourt was organized and named in honor of Lord Botetourt, governor of the colony of Virginia. It was a vast country, about seven hundred miles long, with the Blue Ridge for its eastern and the Mississippe for its western boundary. It included large parts of the present states of \\'est Virginia. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and was the first county organization covering what is now Clark county. After the conquest of the Indiana and Illinois country by General George Rogers Clark, in 1778. the county of Illinois was erected by the Virginia legislature (in October of the same year) out of the great county of Botetourt, and included all the territory between the Pennsyl- vania line, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the northern lakes. Colonel Tohn Todd was appointed the first county lieutenant and civil commandant of the county. He perished in the battle of Blue Licks, August i8, 1782. and Timothy de Montbrun was named as his successor.

The close of the war of the Revolution found the American states deeply involved in debt and with no resources in prospect, except such as might be derived from the sale of their lands west of the Alleghanies. Some of the states claimed that the title to this vast unsettled domain to have ^-ested in the various colonies whose charters had extended their limits indeffinitely to the west, and there was a special claim from Virginia on account of her conquest and the retention of possession through George Rogers Clark. Other states objected to this, but on October 20. 1783, Virginia authorized a cession to the Federal government, and on March i, 1784, our countn* passed from Virginian rule to that of the United States of America. A plan for the di- ^-ision of this vast tract was taken up immediately and a scheme for the formation of ten states out of it was reported. The names of the states as proposed were as follows : Sylvania, Chersonesus, Michigania, Washington, Saratoga, Metropotamia, Assenisipia, Illinoia, Polypotamia and Pelisipia. These last two names concern Clark county, as it lay partly in both as proposed. Both of these states lay south of the thirty-ninth parallel and north of the Ohio river, and their dividing line was a meridian drawn through the rapids of the Ohio. Pelisipia was to be the eastern state and Polypotamia the western. To think that our mail might have been addressed to Charlestown, Pelisipia, or to Borden, Polypotamia, may appear strange, but such was the plan of the early fathers. However, the plan failed to carry, and the name of Indiana was finally given our great state when the territory was organized, and the illustrious name of Clark given the county when it was created in 1801. Xo legislative measures ever enacted meant so much to Clark county as the Ordinance of 1787. This celebrated act, entitled "An ordinance for the government of the territoiy of the United States northwest of the river Ohio." was passed by Congress July 13. 1787. By this great organic act - "the last gift," as Chief Justice Chase said, " of the congress of the old confederation to the country, and it was a fit consummation of their glorious labors" - provision was made for various forms of territorial government to be adopted in succession, in due order of the advancement and development of the western country. The sixth article provided that. "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary sen-itude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. This question of slavery was a bitter one, and within a few years was to become the chief issue in the politics of the territory of Indiana, but it was a luilwark behind which the best men of the time stood, and even the action of a legislature was powerless to have this paragraph changed. The settlement made at

Clarkesville, mentioned in a succeeding chapter, and the building of the fort at Jeffersonville in 1786 were the beginning of the settlements of Clark county. This period of the history of the county will be more fully treated in the chapter on the military annals.

In 1793 the first of the great floods ever recorded overtopped the banks of the Ohio and the few settlers who had built their cabins in the rich lowlands were forced to retreat to higher ground for safety, while their fences, and, in some cases, their cabins, floated away. This flood was not as great as the flood of 1832. but no record of the stage of the water is in existence.