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IO YOUTH
how the settlement, built up with the aid of French settlers from Canada who followed the lead of the daring pioneer, Sieur de Vincennes, became the first "European village" in Indiana— the land of the Indians'. Jesuits, fur traders, British captains, colonial adventurers— all were part of this explosive frontier drama.
Until the close of the French occupation in 1763 the Vincennes region was part of the province of Louisiana. But with Wolfe's victory in Canada the English gained the upper hand, and the seat of government at Vincennes was nominally in London. By 1779, through the American Revolution and the conquests of George Rogers Clark, our territory became a part of Virginia, with our capital at Richmond. In 1784, after our lands had been ceded to the new federal government, the capital was in New York. In 1788 the practical administrative capital had been moved out to Marietta, the first settlement in Ohio; and in 1800, for the first time, it came within the limits of what was soon to become our state. You can see that we had experience with government very early! I suppose we shall never be able to get away from such cracks as: "While some are born writers, artists, and lawyers, and others work for a living, all Hoosiers are born politicians."
Undoubtedly the best-known chapter in our early history is that written by George Rogers Clark and his amazing little "army" which seized the territory for the new nation! He was the great defender of our earliest settlers. The hardships of his men and the brilliance of his campaigns have become legendary. He captured the posts of Kaskaskia and Vincennes in July of 1778, raising the American flag for the first time in Indiana. In 1783, by the Treaty of Paris, the territory became a part of the new American republic.
Special ordinances of 1785 and 1788 opened these lands— now embraced in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and parts of other states— to the settlement of pioneer homemakers who formed the first big wave of continental expansion westward.
The first settlements in Sullivan County had been made near Vincennes, on lands obtained by a treaty made by the French with the Indians as early as 1742. By a land law of 1791, Congress made attractive provision for settlers: Four hundred acres of land were to be given to the head of any family living in the region in 1783, and one hundred acres to each man enrolled in the militia in 1790. These grants were known as "donations," "military donations," or "surveys."
In 1803 General William Henry Harrison— governor of the territory, and the first of the famous Harrisons to stand out in Indiana historyconcluded a new treaty with the Indian tribes, which confirmed the earlier cession of 1 742 and the "Old Indian Boundary" which ran across our county. The recorded settlements in Sullivan County date from this year of 1803, when James Ledgerwood pioneered in the vicinity of