 Jennings
County, named in honor of Jonathan Jennings, the first Governor of the State,
was organized in 1817, and it contains 375 square miles. It is bounded on
the north by Bartholomew and Decatur, on the east by Ripley, on the south
by Scott and Jefferson, and on the west by Jackson. It is divided into nine
civil townships, viz: Bigger, Campbell, Columbia, Geneva, Marion, Montgomery,
Sand Creek, Spencer and Vernon. The population in 1830 was 3,950, in 1840,
8,829, and at this time [1849] about 10,000. Near the streams, the face of
the country is hilly and broken, and moderately fertile, except in the beech
flats, at the head of the streams, where it is only fit for grass. There
is an abundance of excellent timber in the county, of which large quantities
are sawn and taken to the Railroad to the river; and the quarries of Limestone
are very fine and convenient, from which the interior of the State is extensively
supplied with building materials of rock and lime. A millstone quarry, near
Scipio, has also at time been worked extensively.
The agriculture of the county is not such as to afford much surplus products
for market, yet considerable quantities of various articles are constantly
sent off on the Railroad. There are in the county thirteen grist mills,
twenty-nine sawmills, seven of them propelled by steam, one woolen factory,
eighteen dry goods stores, two drug stores, four groceries, three warehouses,
five lawyers, twelve physicians, three Presbyterian, two Catholic, twenty
Baptist, seven Reformers, five Methodist and two United Brethren preachers,
forty churches, a flourishing County Seminary and sixty-five school districts,
in which schools are taught fro three to six months a year.
The taxable land amounts to 200,220 acres, about 25,000 acres belong to the
United States, and 15,000 acres have been sold that are not yet taxable. |
