| History
of Lawrence County, Indiana
Transcribed passages are from the following
book
History of Lawrence and Monroe Counties Indiana
1914 B. F. Bowen & Co. Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana
CHAPTER III Early Settlement of Lawrence County
Lawrence County was first a portion of Knox and Harrison Counties.
In the year 1814 it became identified with Washington County, and
in 1816 a part of Orange County. The county of Lawrence itself was
created in 1818.……
The first years of the nineteenth century saw very little settlement
in the county by white men. The Indians were hostile and the perils
of making a home were great. The slow immigration of the tribes to
the West had not yet begun, and the pioneer hesitated to be the first
to combat with their treacherous customs. The Ohio river was then
the avenue of commerce to the Middle west and consequently the settlement
of the state proceeded northward from this river. The advance was
slow made so by the necessity for large numbers to keep together in
order to repel the Indian attacks. Not until the year 1811 the year
of the Battle
of Tippecanoe, did Lawrence County receive any numbers of white
families.
Records show that probably the first settlement of any consequence
was made a spot where Leesville, Flinn Township, now stands, on the
eastern border of the county. The settlers of this place had left
Lee County, Virginia,
in 1809 and passed the next winter in Kentucky. In February 1810 they
came to the above mentioned place and built a fort near the present
grist mill in Leesville. The block-house completed the men journeyed
back to Kentucky after their families. These families were the Guthries
and Flinns, who were attacked by the Pottawatomies later, and their
names have been perpetuated in the history of the county as the highest
types of honor, courage and self sacrifice, and today their descendants
are numbered among the most respected citizens of Lawrence County.
Daniel Guthrie and his sons and Jacob and William Flinn were the men
of the group, and each was a frontiersman skilled in all the arts
of pioneer life, in hunting, fishing, farming and in fighting the
warlike tribes. Daniel Guthrie is noted as being one of the Continentals
who defeated General Braddock prior to the Revolutionary War.
Read history of Individual Townships
Flinn
Township
Marion
Township
Guthrie
Township
Bono
Township
Marshall
Township
Spice
Valley Township
Perry
Township
Indiana
Creek Township
Pleasant
Run Township
Shawswick
Township
Abandoned
Towns and Village Platts
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