Johnson County, Indiana - Chapter 4: The Fikst Settlements, 1881

The Delawares stipulated for possession of their country for a term of two years, but it seems to have been the understanding of both parties that white men could occupy the country jointly with the red. Whetzel, it is true, made application to the Delaware chief for the privilege of cutting a trace through his reserve, but we fail to find that any one else took the like precaution. James Wilson located on Whetzel's trace in 1818, at its crossing with Blue River, and was the first settler in Shelby County. The next year, several families followed Wilson, but none came west of the present site of Shelby ville, who settled in that county until about 1822.

In 1819, three settlements were planted in Bartholomew County, one of which was by Joshua McQueen, Tunis Quick, John Connor and Allen Wilson, on Flat Rock Creek, four miles east of the present site of Taylorsville. The same year, Richard Berry built a cabin in the edge of Bartholomew, at the place where the Indian trail crossed Blue River, a mile below the town of Edinburg. This trail led from the falls at Louisville, not far from the present line of the Jeftersonville Railroad, passing in the vicinity of the village of Waynesville, in Bartholomew County, and crossing the In-quah-sah-quah of the Indian tongue (translated into Driftwood by the white men), thence to Blue River at Berry's, and thence into Johnson County. A branch trail led up Sugar Creek, and, at the mouth of Young's Creek, another branch took up that stream, crossing Young's Creek just below the mouth of the Hurricane, and thence on the east side of that stream ; but all these branching paths led to the Delaware towns, while the main one went by the way of the Big Spring at Hopewell, and so on north, crossing White River at the mouth of Fall Creek, and thence leading to the towns on the Wabash. This trail leading to the Wabash towns came to be known after a time as " Berry's trace," from the fact that Richard Berry blazed the path for the convenience of travelers.

In 1820, the tide of emigration to the New Purchase set in strong from the South and from the East. The United States surveyors were at work, and it was known that by fall the lands surveyed would be subject to purchase. Indeed, all of Nineveh Township had been surveyed by Abraham Lee in the month of

September, 1819. In June, 1820, John Hendricks surveyed somuch of Franklin Township as lies in Congressional Township 12, Range 5, and, in August of that year, Thomas Hendricks surveyed Congressional Township 1 2, Range 4, being in the west part of Franklin Township. In the same month of August, John Hendricks surveyed all the lands comprised within the present boundaries of Blue River Township, and, as soon as he had completed this, he went over and surveyed the Congressional township better known as Union, and, while he was at that, B. Bently was surveying Hensly. W. B. McLaughlin surveyed all of White River, in Congressional Township 14, and Bently all that is in Township 13 ; and, later in the season, all the territory now contained within Pleasant Township was surveyed by Thomas Hendricks, while John Hendricks surveyed all contained within Clark Township.

In the month of May, 1820, the Commissioners appointed by the Legislature to select a site for the new capital of the State, were to meet at the house of William Connor, on White River. On the 17th of the month, John Tipton and Gov. Jennings set out on horseback for the rendezvous. Accompanying them was "Bill," a black boy. On the way, Gen. Joseph Bartholomew, Col. Jesse Dunham, also Commissioners, and Gen. J. Can* and Capt. Dueson, fell in with them. Passing beyond the confines of civilization, the little party struck the Indian trail, and, as John Tipton kept a journal of every day's journey, we are not left in the dark as to their movements. At a quarter past 3 o'clock on Saturday, the 20th day of the month, the cavalcade reached Berry's. It had taken them two hours and a quarter to ride from the upper rapids of the In-quah-sah-quah (where Columbus stands) to that place. There they stopped for the night. " Good land, good water and timber," exclaims honest John Tipton. The next morning, at half after 4 o'clock, they set out again ; but now that these Commissioners, accompanied by the Governor of the State, are traveling through Johnson County, over an Indian path, and their movements become more interesting to the thread of this history, the journal becomes provokingly obscure. It says :

" Sunday, 21. - Set out at half-past 4. At 5, passed a corner of Section 36, Township 11 north, of Range 4 east ; passed a place where Bartholomew and myself had encamped in June. 1813. Missed our way. Traveled east then.

" At 8 o'clock, stopped on a muddy branch ; boiled our coffee. At 9:30, turned back. I killed a deer, the first one I have killed since 1814. Came on the trail at 10; found tree where I had written my name on the 19th June, 1813. We traveled fast,

It was the northeast corner of the southeast section in Nineveh Township that was passed at 5 o'clock. But where was it that Gen. Bartholomew and himself had encamped in June, 1813 ? It was after passing that place they missed their way and traveled east.

If we knew the time that elapsed after crossing the section corner before they missed their way, we might, with some degree of certainty, locate the " muddy branch," and perhaps identify the section on which the future United States Senator killed a deer on that Sunday morning, over sixty years ago, and, may be, find the farm on which grew the tree on which he wrote his name on the 19th of June, 1813. The most we can say is, that the encampment must have been in Nineveh Township. The boiling of the coffee and the shooting of the deer most likely took place in Blue River, and the tree on which the name was written may have been in Nineveh, but was probably in Franklin Township.

But let us go back a little. Early in 1820 - as early as February - Edward Adams, Charles Northup, and possibly some others, came to the country and began a clearing a short distance east of the present site of Edinburg, but within the present boundary of Shelby County. These men came without their families, however, and did not then become permanent citizens. In the month of March of this year, John Campbell, a Tennesseean, came by the way of the White Water country, and settled a short distance south of the present site of Edinburg. Campbell came with his family, consisting of his wife Ruth, and eight children, and he came to stay, and he was the first white man to build a cabin and make a settlement in the county of Johnson. On the way out, Benjamin Crews fell in with him, and together they cut out a road to let the teams through. Crews eventually stopped across the Bartholomew County line. Campbell was not left alone in the solitude of the wilderness very long, for quite a number, whose names, as far as now known, appear in the chapter on "Blue River Township," came out the same season, so that, by the close of the year, it is estimated that not less than eighteen families had moved in.

The following fall, the Johnson Countv lands were thrown into the market, and the purchases made were unparalleled in the history of any other township in the county, there being thirty-nine in all, and the acreage purchased, according to the survev, being 4,400.

On the 31st day of August, 1821, John S. Miller, a North Carolinian born, but hailing from Jennings County, Ind., entered the west half of the northeast quarter of Section 34, Township 11, Range 4 east, the first tract taken up within the precincts of Nineveh Township. But he was not the first to become a resident there. Amos Durlin moved into the east side in the spring of that year, and Robert Worl, in the fall, located on the margin of a stream translated from the Indian tongue into Leatherwood, one mile east of the present site of Williamsburg. It must have been about this time that the circumstance occurred which occasioned the change from Leatherwood to Nineveh. Richard Berry, living at the mouth of Sugar Creek, with his son Nineveh, a lad in his teens, wandered up the Leatherwood on a hunting excursion. Espying a deer on the opposite bank of the stream, young Nineveh shot and killed it. Crossing over for his game, the youth shouldered it and undertook to recross on a log, but a misstep sent both boy and game into the stream, which was covered by a thin coating of ice, and he was well nigh drowned before rescued. Then the stream came to be known as "Nineveh's Defeat," and, in process of time, the surplus word was dropped, and " Nineveh " left to perpetuate the memory of the lad's misadventure.

It was in the fall of 1821, Worl came, but no one moved into his immediate neighborhood until the next year, when there was quite an accession to his neighborhood.

In that year 1822, the Burkhart brothers - David, Lewis, Henry, George and William - came from Kentucky, and, following the Indian trail beyond Worl's, David Burkhart built his cabin on the high bank of a little stream, on the farm on which Michael Canary afterward lived and died, while Henry stopped farther south, and located on the north side of Nineveh Township. Following close after the Burkharts came Levi Moore, who pursued the trail as far out as the Big Spring (now Hopewell), and there he turned to the east and built a cabin a few hundred yards west of the present crossing of the bluff road over Young's Creek on the hill now occupied by the residence of John McCaslin. In Moore's Creek, which empties into Young's, near Hopewell, we have perpetuated the memory of this genuine backwoodsman.

In February, 1821, Elisha Adams, a Pennsylvanian by birth, but moving from Kentucky, and Joseph Young, a North Carolinian, and Robert Gilcress, from Washington County, Ind., came to this county. Young settled in the forks of Sugar and Lick Creeks, while Adams moved farther out and built a cabin near the present site of Amity. Lick Creek was so named by the

United States surveyors because of the numerous and excellent deer licks that were here and there along its course. A noted one was found a few miles north of the Big Spring, while another and equally noted was at the mouth of the Hurricane. But Young's cabin soon came to be known better than the licks, and the first settlers, caring little for the work of the surveyors in naming the streams, by common consent changed Lick Creek into Young's Creek, and time has sanctioned their a.ct.

The following fall Adams' horses strayed off, and, following them into Bartholomew County, he there met John Smiley, who inquired of him for a mill seat. Being encouraged to come and see for himself, in 1822 he came and found a site, and at once went to work and built on Sugar Creek the first mill in the county. Others followed, and by the close of the year a substantial settlement was founded on Sugar Creek.

In October, 1820, Daniel Loper built a cabin at the crossing of Whetzel's trace and the Indian trail, now within Pleasant Township. Loper was a genuine son of the backwoods, whose place of nativity is unknown, and, although he was the first settler in both Pleasant and Clark Townships, as will further appear, it is not known when he left the county, nor to what place he went.

A year after John Campbell had planted a settlement in the southern part of the county, Abraham Sells, a Virginian, did the like work for the northwestern corner. He, in company with his brother John and certain members of their families, reached White River Township, near the mouth of Pleasant Run, on the 6th of March, 1821. The same spring the Lowe family, from North Carolina, and John Doty, from Ohio, came in, and a settlement was begun in White River Township.