Normanda, Indiana

In 1839 Archibald Montgomery, a Kentuckian, in company with a party of hunters, passed through the northern part of the township and camped near the present site of Normanda. Being pleased with the country, Mont¬ gomery marked out a claim, with the intention of entering land as soon as it came into the market. In the meantime, he constructed a cabin on his claim, to which his family were moved in 1841, meeting no hostile sentiment on the part of the Indians then in the vicinity. David Kemp came to the township in 1840 and located a claim in the western part, near the village of Kempton, where he built a cabin and moved his family one year later. An¬ drew Evans, a Virginian, made a claim in section 34, the reserve, near Nor- manda. Evans came to Indiana from Kentucky in 1841. He served the town¬ ship as justice of the peace several years. Other settlers who located in the northern part of the township were Edward Jackson, who entered land a short distance south of Normanda in 1841 ; Daniel Stephens, who settled about one and a half miles east of the same place; William Richardson, who took out a claim east of Normanda; Elijah Stanridge, east of Normanda one mile; and James Foster, near Goldsmith.

Passage source: History of Tipton County Indiana, published 1914.

The first orchard was planted by John Horton on his place about the year 1837. He transported the young trees from one of the southern coun¬ ties. John D. Smith set out the second orchard. The first frame house in Jefferson township was built at the village of Normanda in 1848 by M. P. Evans. John D. Smith erected the first hewed log dwelling in the township in the year 1838, and twenty years later built the first brick residence, the third of the kind in the county at that time. Squire Tucker and Frank Wheatley were the next parties to improve their farms by brick houses. The first mill in Jefferson was built by Elijah Stanridge in 1845, an<i it stood about one mile east of Normanda. It was a simple structure, built of un- hewn logs, which rested on four large posts, driven into the ground. The machinery consisted of two "niggerhead" buhrs and a coarse muslin bolting apparatus, all of which was operated by horsepower, each person furnishing the team to grind his own grist. Another early mill was located a few miles south of the southern boundary in Hamilton county, which mill was patron¬ ized considerably by Jefferson township farmers. Daniel Stephens owned a mill in the northern part of the township for nine years.

Passage source: History of Tipton County Indiana, published 1914.

The Normanda steam flouring mill was erected in 1854, and bought shortly afterward by Richardson and Vandevender. It was a two-story frame building, contained two runs of buhrs, with saw mill attached, and ground grain besides manufacturing lumber. Different parties operated this mill for several years, until finally it was moved to Goldsmith. At the village of Tetersburg, Mr. Phares built and operated a saw mill. A large steam saw mill was built in the southern part of the township in an early day. In 1874 F. M. Mozingo erected a large steam saw mill in Kempton, and it was later run as a heading factory. The Goldsmith mill was brought to the vil¬ lage in 1878 from Normanda by Ebal Teter.

Passage source: History of Tipton County Indiana, published 1914.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Jefferson Township - it names this place 1 more 1 time.