A History of Jefferson County's Townships.

For most of its history, ten townships comprised Jefferson County. But during the first two decades of its existence, the county looked much different, not only because it covered more territory, but because townships were created and destroyed.

The original Madison Township was part of Clark County, from which Jefferson was created and when the Jefferson County Common Pleas Court, which handled virtually all county governmental functions, began its work on Feb. 11, 1811, it kept the name of Madison for one of the three townships it created.

The other two were Washington Township and Jefferson Township. Jefferson, with some alterations in its boundaries, became part of Switzerland County when that entity was created in 1814. It initially extended west to the Indian (Greenville) Treat line that runs diagonally to the Northeast from roughly Lamb on the Ohio River.

Washington Township was more extensive. Court records describe it as including all of the residents of the township below the west line of Madison Township., which was a line from the River starting at on the west line of Section 6 Twp. 3N Range 10E. That included all of modern Graham, Hanover, Lancaster, Saluda, Smyrna, and Republican Townships. It also included the western tiers of sections in what is now Monroe Township. (The sections bordering Lancaster); modern Smyrna Township, and the three sections of Madison Township that border the northern boundary of Hanover Township. (a panhandle.) Since Jefferson County included all of the Grouseland purchase, it meant Washington also included Scott County and parts of Jennings and Jackson Counties.

Sandwiched between Washington and Jefferson Township, Madison Township extended east to the treaty line. Since it extended north to the Grouseland purchase boundary, it also encompassed most of Ripley and Jennings counties. Within modern Jefferson County, it was comprised by modern Shelby and Milton Townships, and most of Madison and Monroe Townships, and initially the part of modern Switzerland County between the Treaty line and the modern county border.

The creation of Jennings County in 1816, probably triggered the actions that the Jefferson County Court took next. It created Graham Township on Feb. 10, 1817, which encompassed the west part of the modern county, except for areas that became Lexington and Saluda Townships on February 13; Lancaster Township, laid off on March 5, also included modern Monroe Township.

On March 12, the court created Pittsburgh Township, which took in a roughly triangular piece of modern Milton Township that was bordered on the southwest by the Indian-Kentuck, starting about the site of Manville. The southern part of Milton Township remained in Madison Township. Republican Township was created the same day. Washington Township disappeared as a result of these actions.

Milton Township, taken from Madison and Pittsburgh Townships on May 12, 1818, included modern Shelby Township running from an east-west line between sections 33 and 33 Twp. 4N Range 11E to the Switzerland County border, leaving a remnant of Pittsburgh that was wiped by 1822 by the creation of Shelby Township.

Another vanished township, Edinburgh, is a mystery. There is no reference to its creation or dissolution in county records. The first reference to Edinburgh came on May 6, 1817 when David Talbott was paid for services as an election inspector; Robert Mitchell as an election judge for both Edinburgh and Pittsburgh Townships, Peter Ryker as an election clerk, Samuel Caplinger as judge, John Littlejohn, James Wooley and James Christie as clerks. These men all lived in the Canaan and Barbersville areas. It may have taken in northern Shelby Township, along with Ripley County. It's possible it was destroyed with the creation of Ripley County in 1819, but Jefferson County records simply stopped mentioning it.

There was some tinkering. On June 10, 1811 Jefferson Township's boundary was pushed west to the line dividing Ranges 11 and 12, taking in parts of modern Shelby and Milton Townships. That didn't last as it was pushed back to the current Jefferson/Switzerland County line, but another change did. The court moved Madison Township's boundary about one mile west. Instead of running along the section lines for the corner of the southeast corner of Section 31 Twp. 4N Range 10E, it then ran along the boundary between Ranges 9 and 10E.

The only other boundary chanrges included one that took Paris from Graham Township and made it part of Jennings County, legendarily because it was trouble and was closer to the sheriff at Vernon than at Madison. And the border between Graham Township and Scott County was pushed slightly east. Both measures were approved by the Indiana General Assembly in January 18330. 

The youngest townships were created over an 11 year period--Hanover in September 1836, Monroe on March 11, 1842 and Smyrna on June 16, 1847.

Jefferson County’s Mormon Pioneers

No congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints was successfully established in Jefferson County until the 1960s. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.

It might be better to say no long-lasting congregation was established because there were efforts from very early in the history of the Mormon Church and these continued throughout the 1800s.The earliest record the church reports is the trip by two ministers, Reynolds Cahoon and Samuel Smith, brother of Joseph Smith, who set out for Missouri in June 1831. Along the way, they stopped in Kentucky and preached in Madison, Vienna and Unionville, although no details were given about these appearances.

Next, in the winter of 1832/33, Simeon Carter organized an L.D.S. branch in Hanover, which had 27 members, according to the April 1833 edition of the Evening and Morning Star, a Mormon publication. But no further record of that effort has been found. After that, there is a gap of 20 years of reported church activity in Jefferson County. At a conference in Nauvoo, Ill., held on April 6, 1843, Joshua Holman and John Pierce were appointed as missionaries of Madison. Holman died in 1849, having returned to Nauvoo, and Pierce was not listed in the 18500 Jefferson County census.

What happened next is unclear with only hints given about Mormon activity from records of the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints. (They did not call themselves Mormon and the denomination changed its name to Community of Christ in 2000.) At some point a Swiss immigrant, Louis Van Buren of Manville had become an L.D.S. member. This is known because by 1861, he had joined the reorganized church whose Saints Herald said Van Buren had visited the denomination’s headquarters in Lamoni, Iowa. It reported that “Elder Louis Van Buren, of Manville, Jefferson county, Ind., tarried in this city several days. He is a believer in the New Organization, and I am informed that he was an elder in the Old Organization. He is on his way to Switzerland, his native land, and expects to return next summer.”

The presence of Mormons probably drew the Reorganized Church into Jefferson County for organizing efforts that began in the 1870s with much greater success than the Mormons had achieved.

An 1878 letter by the Rev. James Scott, who spearheaded this activity along with his brother the Rev. John Scott, mentioned that, “There are a great many more of the old saints throughout the county,” but gave no other details. Few of these are known, including, the Rev. William Marshall is known, as a Madison newspaper account said he had been a Mormon, and had been excommunicated by the R.L.D.S. because he believe in polygamy. (In the twentieth century, he was a Baptist and preached at the Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Shelby Township.)

The Scotts began their evangelizing by Dec. 7, 1872 when James wrote he had procured a house of preaching. This was probably at Wirt where on June 27, 1873, following 20 days of meetings held by the Scotts, four Madisonians joined the Union Branch which met at the Union School House two and a half miles from Wirt. These included “Brother Woodburn and his wife” who were described as members of the old church. On July 2, 1873, the Daily Courier reported Union Branch had 26 members. James Scott’s 1878 account said the branch began with 10 members under elder Samuel Rector and minister (called a priest) William Blair. By March, 10, 1876, Union had 33 members. By 1883, it was reportedly considering purchase of the Christian Church building in Lancaster. Whatever it did, Union Branch moved into its old building by Nov. 9, 1884, when the Saints Herald reported its church building had been dedicated. This was probably the one building reported for the denomination in Jefferson County by the 1890 census.

There were also attempts to found a congregation in Madison. The May 15, 1873 Saints Herald, noted that Elders were wanted at Madison. On July 25, Elder Scott and Elder B.V. Springer conducted a service at the hall of the Washington Fire Co. in Madison that drew 50 people. But no congregation formed. Meanwhile, Springer had luck elsewhere. The Madison Courier of Feb. 4, 1874 mentioned that Elder Springer of Kansas had become the settled pastor of the Mormons of Smyrna Township. The congregation gave him ten acres of land and was building a house for him.

While no other records of the Smyrna congregation have been found, more is known about the Mt. Pleasant Branch, which met on the Milton Township of Hall’s Ridge. It was organized on Oct. 13, 1879 with 22 members and conferences of the Reorganized church’s Southern Indiana District were held on Nov. 20, 1879 and March 5, 1881. Since the R.L.D.S. had only one structure in the county in 1890, Mt. Pleasant probably did not have its own building until after the congregation purchased land in 1894. But the church did not last long and in 1904, the property was soon and the new own demolished the building.

By 1900, the L.D.S. itself was ready for one for effort in Jefferson County. Madison’s 1900 census showed Hugh Harvey, Jessie Pay, Isaac Zundel, and Erick Larsen boarding at 204 East Street. All four, born in Utah, had the same occupation “preaching.” They probably returned to their homes after their missionary service and there was no Mormon congregation in Madison until 1967.

The Myth of Madison’s Pork Supremacy

Madison, a small city on the Ohio River was once the pork packing capital of the world, eclipsing its larger upstream neighbor Cincinnati. In 1850, a Madison newspaper bragged that the city had five times as many hogs as Cincinnati.

Unfortunately, the story wasn't true. Madison was a leading city for slaughtering hogs and packing porjs. But it never came close to matching the volume of business done in the Queen City. It did close the gap in 1852, Madison’s greatest year and the last year of growth in its pork market.

In 1837, the first year that statistics are available for Madison, it handled 13,000 hogs while Milton, Ky., processed 5,000, according to the Western Address Directory. Cincinnati packed 103,000 that year. Madison only topped 100,000 once and that was in that final year of glory. Madison’s three best years were 1850, 1851 and 1852 and the number of hogs was reported at 93,949, 94,984, and 130,730, and had the town been able to maintain its dominance in Indiana railroads, it probably would have kept growing.

But even then, from 1833 through 1851, Cincinnati had only two years in which its volume dropped below 100,000 hogs. There were 85,000 in 1833 and 95,000 in 1840. In the 1840s, there were five years in which the totals were 213,000 or higher. In 1848, 1849 and 1850, Cincinnati houses packed 498,160, 310,000 and 401,755 hogs respectively. There was a reason Cincinnati, not Madison, was nicknamed “Porkopolis” during that era.

The Cincinnati numbers were from the book The Industry Resources of the Southern and Western States, published in 1852 by J.B.D. DeBow, a Louisiana professor who was known for his magazine DeBow’s Review, which covered a wide range of economic issues in these regions. While statistics vary in other sources, none of them put Madison in the lead in any year.

The reasons for Cincinnati’s dominance are likely very simple: it was founded earlier and it was bigger so it had the time to develop the resources that Madison was just beginning to attract. Also, while the area to the north of Madison was just starting to develop in the 1830s, Cincinnati was able to draw on a more mature farm economy from most directions.

Cincinnati packing houses could also offer more money to farmers. The 1850 annual report of the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad noted that in good weather, some farmers drove their hogs to Cincinnati, rather than shipping them to Madison, probably reflecting a combination of higher prices paid there and the high rates the Madison railroad charged.

When the railroads linked, Cincinnati picked up more business. And as is accurately told, Madison’s booms days were over.

A Band of Gypsies

They didn’t have much, if any impact on Jefferson County, and they may have left no descendants in the area. But a band of gypsies that settled in Hanover by 1860 got more than their share of stories published about their brief sojourn in Jefferson County.

The group showed up in the town of Hanover when 81 persons identified in the 1870 census were shown as gypsies. They carried the surnames: Green, Youngs, Woods, Reynolds, Knobbs, Smythes and Bofo and included some distinct first names, such as Whyte Youngs and Pablo

Youngs. Thirty-seven bore the Young/Youngs surname and 12 were Greens.

The 1860 Jefferson County census doesn’t shown the surname Stanley, even though several sources show that Owen Stanley, reportedly the Gypsy King (there were probably many of them) and died in his wagon near Madison on Feb. 21, 1860 in his sixty-seventh year. There were supposed to be 200 in this group so the rest must have left by 1870.

Stanley was born in Reading, Berkshire, England, and his body was taken back to the Woodland Cemetery near Dayton, to be buried next to his wife, Harriet Warden, who died on Aug. 30, 1857, age 63. That's according to the History of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio, published in 1909, whose author found their tombstones. This book claims Woodland was the first gypsy cemetery in the United States, but that’s one of those claims that should be immediately questioned.

The group appeared to have arrived at Dayton in 1856 from Canada (where they can't have stayed long), moved on to Indiana quickly, and most moved on quickly again. The best evidence of their emigration date comes from a transcribed tombstone in the cemetery that showed: “ daughter of Mary,Dangefo and Dovie Stanley; born in England, died December 11th, 1857, aged two years and fourteen days," …

The publications talking about them were kind, compared to some of the comments made about gypsies. Part of this seems to have been racial--the Stanleys were far more European looking than some of their darker brethren.

Owen Stanley was succeeded as king by his son Levi Stanley, whose wife Matilda became queen. There is no indication they came to Indiana with the rest of the tribe and were shown in Troy, Miami County, Ohio, in 1860. There were 25 people shown as wanderers in Troy. The 1880 census shows none of these families remaining In Indiana--they apparently came together and left together.

Madison’s Curious Status

An earlier column on this blog looked at the odd way in which the founding of Madison has been given as 1809 and which has led to the city’s 200^th anniversary being set for 2009—even though the only thing that happened in 1809 was John Paul’s purchase of the land on which lots were later created.

As pointed out, the first settler within the land that became Old Town Madison, John Henry Wagner, arrived in 1808 and no lots were sold until 1811. But beyond that is the question of the status of Madison as an officially authorized government entity, after its platting by Paul.

Initially, Madison was simply a populated area governed by the Court of Common Pleas, which handled all areas of government for Jefferson County after it began operating on Jan. 11, 1811.

The first act specifically naming Madison was the creation of road districts—for defining the area in which residents could be required to work on public roads. This occurred on June 18, 1811, although for some reason the court then authorized Madison to be formed into a road district on Feb. 19, 1812, perhaps reducing the number of districts to one—the minutes do not spell out the difference.

Madison was the also site of a justice of the peace court with the appointment of William Vawter on May 15, 1808. Justices were appointed by the governor until Indiana became a state in 1816, and there is no indicated that these justice’s territory was limited to Madison. (Even though John Vawter stated he was the first justice, territorial records clearly show William’s appointment and that John was named to the position “vis”—in place of—William, who had resigned on July 16.

Madison definitely got its own justices on March 5, 1817, as the commissioners authorized an election to be held on the first Monday in April for the election of two justices “for the Town of Madison who are to reside there …”

The usual report is that Madison was not incorporated as a town until April 1, 1824. However, the minutes of the county court showed the election of Dawson Blackmore, Nathaniel Hunt, Abraham Clarkson, James Ross and Martin Rowzer as trustees on Sept. 8, 1817. The language of the minutes is clear in referring to these men as trustees for the “corporation of the town of Madison” and this seemed to end the court’s direct governance.

Besides the 1824 action, there were more involving Madison’s status as a town. It was incorporated again on Jan. 2, 1829. Then followed a series of laws, including one of Jan. 25, 1850 in which the state legislature extended the town’s southern boundary from High Street to the Ohio River. However, the lawmakers felt that a series of amendments to the charter had made the situation confusing, and reincorporated the town on Feb. 4, 1831

As a town, Madison had no mayor. The trustees choose one of their own members as president who presided over meetings and signed official documents. In 1824, and perhaps earlier, the board had been expanded to seven from the five-member board of 1817.

Madison achieved its final government form in 1838 when it was incorporated as a city.

The Council Bluffs Land: Politicians for Hire?

Did three leading Indiana politicians sell their votes in the 1850s?

On the surface, the charge, made in the Council Bluffs (Iowa) Bugle of April 14, 1858, looked ridiculous. The newspaper claimed that Senator Jesse D. Bright, a Madisonian, and Congressmen William H. English and James B. Foley, all Democrats, had accepted land as payoffs for the votes for admitting Kansas as a state under the Lecompton Constitution, which permitted slavery.

The House of Representatives appointed a committee to investigate the charges on April 27, 1858, but the motion was immediately tabled and there is no record of further discussion.

The Bugle article, which was read into the Journal of the House of Representatives, alleged that that the Commissioner of the General Land Office ordered 2,480 acres to be entered in Bright’s name, 2,280 in English’s and 1,440 acres in Foley's.

The men's defenders noted that the charge made no sense since Bright voted for the Lecompton bill and Foley and English against it. The Lecompton Constitution had the support of President James Buchanan and the question of whether to recognize Kansas as a slave or free state was a major issue leading to the success of the Republican Party. And it’s hard to see why Bright, a slave owner who supported the Fugitive Slave Act, needed an incentive.

Foley represented a district including Decatur County from 1857 through 1859. English, a Scott County resident, represented Indiana’s second district from 1853 through 1861. However, English actually authored a compromise and was considered a Buchanan man.

But the three men did secure thousands of acres in Iowa in patents dated May 1, 1860 and entered at the Council Bluffs land office. So did Buchanan, who as president signed the patents, attempt to sway Bright, Foley and English regarding some issue?

Because Bright did in fact patent 2,480 acres at the Council Bluffs land office and English had 15 patents dated May 1, each 120 acres for a total of 2,240—the 2,280 mentioned in the congressional record was likely a transcription or typographical error. And Foley’s nine May 1 patents of 160 acres each add up to 1,440 acres.

All of these patents came via land warrants that were originally awarded to soldiers who had served in the War of 1812 or the Mexican War, and had been signed over to the politicians. Other politicians had followed this practice. For example, Senator William Hendricks, another Madisonian, patented 1,480 acres that had been awarded to soldiers.

Since amounts of land patented by the three men match those reported in the Iowa newspaper, something was up. But what? Did Bright get land for trying to persuade English, who had worked in Bright's law firm, and Foley? Certainly, Madison Courier Editor Michael Garber, Bright’s nemesis, considered the senator to be corrupt and accused him of padding his Senate expenses. And while Garber was shrill, he was often perceptive. But Garber apparently did not know about this issue.

The question remains of just how these men obtained the land.

Hoyt vs. the Madison & Indianapolis Railroad

The cog system that enabled railroad cars to climb the long inclined plane of the Madison & Indianapolis Railroad was a very good idea.

It was so good that a Dupont resident, William Hoyt, and the railroad company fought for years over who invented the system and had the rights to its patent. Hoyt received the first patent in 1849. But the patent office overturned the grant and awarded it to Andrew Cathcart, a Scottish machinist who was still working for the M&I.

While most histories credit Cathcart with the invention, Hoyt claimed he invented it in 1840 and that Cathcart stole the design after seeing it 1844.

The battle really pitted Hoyt against John Brough, the hardworking and arrogant president of the M&I whose name lives on in Brough’s Folly, the uncompleted tunnel in what is now Clifty Falls State Park.

Hoyt pictured his opposition as using unfair tactics. When witnesses gave depositions, all those testifying for Cathcart were railroad employees who gave their statement in the company offices in front of Brough, along with lawyers Michael Bright and Joseph G. Marshall, who were railroad directors. Hoyt tried to get the lawyers to testify, claiming they were acting for Cathcart. But Bright and Marshall said they represented the company. Hoyt also alleged that all witnesses met beforehand in private in William Jackson, the railroad’s secretary, or with “the Old Fox himself” [Brough] in the company anterooms.

The most serious charge was that in January 1850, Brough advertised in an Indianapolis newspaper that he was “of counsel” to Cathcart.

All of these charges were spelled out in a pamphlet called “Vindication” that Hoyt published in 1850 in support of his version of events.

Money was at stake. Hoyt alleged that the railroad company agreed to pay $1,000 a year, plus a $6,000 payment in 1853, if the experiment were success if Cathcart received the patent, which would then be transferred to the company. The company feared if Hoyt won, he would seek damages, the inventor said

Whoever was right, the Scientific American of June 12, 1858, reported the railroad “compromised the dispute by paying him [Hoyt} a handsome sum.” Handsome or not, other sources reported the amount as $1,000, not bad for the era.