Lancaster Township, Wells County, Indiana
From Black Hawk Slept Here
Lancaster Township consists mostly of Congressional township T27N R12E, plus a small portion of the next township to the east in R13E.
Lancaster Township is where the earliest settlement of Wells County took place, in the vicinity of the village now called Murray.
At the time of the Black Hawk war the settlers there had reason to feel isolated. The nearest settlements on the Wabash River were downstream at Huntington (16 miles as the crow flies) and upstream at Fort Recovery, Ohio (35 miles).
What about the considerably larger settlement at Fort Wayne? For practical purposes, Fort Wayne was even farther away, even though for a crow the distance was only 20 miles. But to get there required leaving the Wabash river system and making one's way through the extensive forested wetlands of the St. Mary's River drainage. This route was extremely difficult until these wetlands began to be ditched and drained for agriculture in the mid-19th century. Early retail businesses in Bluffton (which did even not exist until several years after the Black Hawk scare) got their goods from Cincinnati (125 miles distant) rather than Fort Wayne.
News of the Black Hawk war probably came either from Cincinnati or from the settlements on the St. Joseph River and its tributaries in northern Indiana. (This would be the larger St. Joseph River that flows into Lake Michigan, not the smaller St. Joseph River that joins the St. Mary's to form the Maumee at Fort Wayne.) In southern Wisconsin, where some of the actual fighting took place, government land surveyors left their work unfinished and hurried to Galena, Illinois for safety, and then traveled down the Mississippi to the Ohio River and upstream to Cincinnati, where they filed reports of what had happened. But the war news also traveled quickly along the St. Joseph River system. Settlers began to build forts for safety as far west as the prairies near Mongo in LaGrange county, 60 miles to the north.
The early histories of Wells County that were written in the 1870s and 1880s tell of the arrival of the first settlers and of how they left the country for safety during the war scare in 1832. While these stories consistently portray a state of disruption due to the Black Hawk war, they are not completely consistent in describing who did what. When the first of these histories was published, one of the participants was still living. But he seems not to have been one of the community storytellers. Even if he had been, his reminiscences would have been at a distance of 40-some years. One of the settlers who came in the aftermath of the scare was still alive, urging all of the old-timers to get their stories written down, but it quickly became too late for that to happen. Most of the accounts are at second- or third-hand, at a distance of many years, and are confused and contradictory in some of their details. Other articles in this wiki present these stories from the county histories and analyze them, flawed as they are.
What we know from General Land Office records
There is another source of information about some of the details of settlement. The General Land Office records are available online. They tell their own story, and can be used to compare with what is told in some of the old reminiscences.
Figure 1 shows the locations of all the land patents that were issued in Wells County prior to the Black Hawk war. They are all in Wells County, on the Wabash River downstream from Bluffton. They give an idea of what the people who got the first picks considered the best locations to be. The purchasers are color coded as shown in the key, and listed in order of the the first patent that was issued to each person.
Allen Norcross was issued the first patent, on January 4, 1831, and Abraham McDowel the last, on January 3, 1832. No other patents were issued in Wells County until 1833, when one was issued to Robert Harvey. Four were issued in 1834. In 1835 patents began to be issued in larger numbers. In 1837 there was a big jump upward in numbers.
Figure 1 does not necessarily show all the land purchases that had been made prior to the Black Hawk war. The information on when people went to the land office to make their selections is not nearly as accessible as the information about when the patents were issued. A considerable amount of time could elapse between a purchaser going to the land office and "entering" his land and making payment, and the issuing of a land patent. The General Land Office usually had a huge backlog of patent applications to process. But a good first guess is that the land patents were issued in roughly the same order as the applications had been made, unless there were complications. Until someone does further research in the National Archives, this information will have to do.
As been noted, Allen Norcross was issued the first patent. Joseph Knox is credited as the first settler, and probably was. Purchasers weren't necessarily settlers in any case.) But Norcross was entered a land patent several months before the two that were issued to Joseph Knox. James Harvey was issued patents on the same day as Joseph Knox, but Harvey's had lower document numbers, suggesting even he may have preceded Knox at the land office.
The 1887 county history says of Joseph Knox's settlement:
Joseph Knox was the first white man to make his home in Wells County, being also the first to settle at any point between Fort Recovery and Huntington, and that was in the year 1829, on the southeast quarter of section 18, Lancaster Township, near Murray Postoffice, or the village of Lancaster. Shortly after his location here he was joined by his two sons-in-law, Vantrees and Warner, who "took up" the tracts since known as the Robert and James Harvey farms. Both came with their families and remained until 1832, when they were all frightened out of the country by wild rumors concerning the Black Hawk war.
Whoever Warner and Vantrees were, there are no land records for them. If they settled on land later known as the Robert and James Harvey farms, it suggests that they were "squatters" and had not purchased the land they settled on. Maybe the words "took up" in quotes are a backhanded way of saying just that. This also suggests an alternative reason for their having left the country in 1832. They may have had to leave when the owners of their tracts arrived.
The early land purchasers
- Allen Norcross -- Fled during the Black Hawk score, but returned. He was living alone in Lancaster Township when he died in 1879.
- James Harvey -- A brother of Robert Harvey. Came to Lancaster Township in Fall 1833. His residence was on Section 19. His wife, Sarah, was still living when the county histories were being written and was a source of information.
- Joseph Knox -- said to have left during the Black Hawk war. Sold his land to Henry Miller in November 1832.
- Robert Harvey -- Was completely blind when he moved to Lancaster Township with his family. His brothers John and Samuel from Union County came to take him back during the war scare. Said to have been the 4th head of household to settle in Lancaster Township, presumably after Norcross, Knox, and Knox's two sons-in-law.
- John Harvey -- Probably a brother of Robert Harvey. Was not yet living in Lancaster Township at the time of the Black Hawk war.
- Abraham McDowel -- also from Union County
References
- Goodrich, De Witt C. An illustrated history of the state of Indiana. Indianapolis: Peale & Co., 1875, page 464
- Ibid. Biography of Henry Miller -- (from a rootsweb.com site)
- Ibid. Biography of James Harvey -- (from a rootsweb.com site)
- Ibid. Biography of Jacob R. Harvey -- (transcript at rootsweb.com)
Articles that contain Black Hawk war scare anecdotes
External links
- Road map of Lancaster township from Wells County USGenweb -- This is obviously part of a larger map. It's not clear when or where the map was made, but it's a nice looking one.
- Backwoods Bluffton -- contains information about the area between Bluffton and Fort Wayne
- Facts about the Maumee River and Watershed Restoration Plans -- describes restoration plans for the Maumee River basin (of which the St. Mary's is a part).
