 Morgan
County, named in honor of General Daniel Morgan, was organized in 1822. It
contains 453 square miles, and is bounded north by Hendricks and Marion,
east by Johnson, south by Brown and Monroe, and west by Owen and Putnam.
It contains the following townships, viz: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison,
Monroe, Jackson, Harrison, Brown, Clay, Ray, Baker, Green and Gregg. The
population in 1830 was 5,579, in 1840, 10,741, and at this time about 14,000.
About one-third of the county is river and creek bottoms, the soil a sandy
loam and of the richest quality. There is generally a ridge of hills where
these bottoms terminate. Back of these the land becomes undulating, and in
some places level, and in some places too wet for any crop but grass. In
the south part of the county, adjoining Monroe, is a very hilly and broken
region, yet the timber is good and the soil excellent, where it can be
cultivated. No part of the State is more favorable for agriculture, and some
of the best farms in it are now found here. The principal crop is corn, though
wheat, oats, grass, and fruit are successfully cultivated, and the spirit
of progress is now apparent among the farmers, in the erection of substantial
buildings, in planting good orchards and vineyards, and in increasing the
variety and quality of their crops. Though White River is not favorable for
navigation but a short time each year, yet from twenty-five to thirty boats,
carrying from fifty to seventy tons, are annually sent off freighted with
surplus products. Other articles are taken to the Madison and Indianapolis
Railroad, and cattle, horses and mules are driven usually to distant markets.
In most years, 40,000 bushels of corn, and mules, and many other articles
of considerable value have been exported from this county, and were there
a railroad completed to Martinsville or Mooresville, as has been proposed,
or even the Plank Road completed from Franklin to the Bluffs, the amount
would be largely increased.
There are in the county eighteen gristmills, twenty-eight sawmills, three
carding machines, one fulling mill, one printing office, thirty stores and
groceries, seven lawyers, twenty physicians, thirty preachers, about 300
mechanics, a flourishing County Seminary, and about eighty common schools,
which are kept up a portion of the year. The religious denominations that
have erected churches are as follows: Cumberland Presbyterians one, Lutherans
one, Baptists five, Reformers or Christians ten, Friends three, Methodists
fourteen. The taxable land in the county is 217,047 acres.
In the western part of the county is a cavern, from the mouth of which leaps
a foaming stream that only at a few feet distance turns a flourishing mill.
This cavern has been explored about half a mile, but the darkness and the
myriads of bats that make its gloomy halls their abode, render its full
exploration a matter of difficulty. About two and a-half miles southeast
of Martinsville, at a ford of the creek, where an Indian trail passed it,
is a spot called by the Indians "Murder Ground." The origin of the name,
by their tradition, was that one of their parties having captured several
prisoners from Kentucky, in early times, had escaped with them to this place
without being pursued, as they thought. Here they left their prisoners bound,
and went out to hunt. In their absence, a party of Kentuckians came up and
stationed themselves in ambush, near the prisoners, and shot the Indians
almost to a man as they returned at different times from hunting. |
