 Parke
County, organized in 1821, was named in honor of Benjamin Parke, the first
member of Congress for the Territory, and afterwards a Territorial and then
a District Judge. It is bounded north by Fountain and Montgomery, east by
Putnam, south by Clay and Vigo, and west by the Wabash, and it contains about
440 square miles. The civil townships are Adams, Washington, Sugar Creek,
Liberty, Reserve, Wabash, Florida, Raccoon, Union, Jackson and Green. The
population in 1830 was 7,534, in 1840, 13,499, and at this time [1849] about
18,000. At least two-thirds of the county is either level or slightly undulating,
the balance is more undulating, and in places swells into hills, which usually
have no great elevation. There are several small, rich prairies, with well
timbered lands adjacent, and there are some sandy and poor barrens, but more
than three-fourths of the county was originally covered with fine forests
of oak, walnut, sugar, beech, ash and hickory. The soil is mostly a black
loam with a mixture of sand, easily cultivated, and equal in fertility to
any part of the west. To this also and the fine water power that may be had
on Sugar and Raccoon creeks, and their numerous branches, the beds of coal
and iron ore, and the location on the Wabash River and the Wabash and Erie
Canal, and this may, in most respects, be esteemed the best county in the
State. The surplus articles exported in a year, have been found to be 100,000
bushels of corn, 50,000 do. Wheat, 20,000 do. Oats, 20,000 barrels of flour,
20,000 hogs, 3,000 head of cattle, and 200 horses and mules, estimated to
be worth over $300,000, and all the product of the county.
There are in the county twenty gristmills, twenty-four sawmills, six carding
machines, thirty-one stores, six groceries, two printing offices, seven lawyers,
twenty-five physicians, twenty-five preachers and 275 mechanics. There is
a County Seminary at Rockville with fifty students, and a Female Seminary
with forty, and of 6,525 children between 5 and 21 years of age, 5,200 attend
school from three to six months in the year. The prevailing religious
denominations are Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists and Christians.
The taxable land amounts to 261,438 acres; 9,320 acres more have been purchased
but are not yet taxable, and 7,610 acres still belong to the United States. |
