Dearborn County Asylum for the Poor

During the year 1815 David, George and Joseph Johnston, from Fred¬ erick county, Virginia, located on north Hogan, in the township. They had left Virginia in 1810, settling first in Butler county, Ohio, and in 1812 re¬ moving to Vincennes, then they came to Louisville, Kentucky, and in 1814 to where Aurora was later built, and a year later to Manchester township.

Passage source: History of Dearborn County Indiana, published 1915.

In 1876 George W. Lane nad an article in the Aurora Independent which spoke of the township of Manchester as follows : "Soon after the War of 1812 one of the most important settlements for numbers and character was made in Manchester township. They suffered many hardships and, indeed, many privations, but they stood their ground like Christian martyrs and many lived to see tall oaks utilized for other purposes and removed to make room for houses, barns and meadows, and in less than a decade the ridge was under a high state of cultivation for miles, and in the fall rows of teams would be seen on the road hauling off the surplus of their farms and cooper shops. The latter work was carried on for a number of years, as Manchester was studded over with heavy timber, the tallest and largest trees this side of California, and to work up these great oaks into pork barrels required the labor of Mr. Jaquith and all of his boys, and these boys were as good, jovial fellows as were ever turned loose in any big woods.

Passage source: History of Dearborn County Indiana, published 1915.

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 Manchester Township - 3,544 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.