Lesson 6 - Settlement of Indiana

Turkey Run State Park

After the end of the War of 1812, the Indiana Territory was finally under control of the United States. The British had withdrawn completely and ended their support of and alliance with American Indians in the United States. This result led to the opening of the land to settlement by whites. After the War of 1812, the Indiana Territory began to see more stability, which in addition to making land cheap and available, also encouraged settlement.

Salmon Lusk, a veteran of the War of 1812, moved from Vermont to Parke County, Indiana in 1822. At the Narrows of Sugar Creek, he established a gristmill and sawmill business. The land was rich in trees, being an old-growth forest, which became the legacy of the Lusk family a century later when the area became the nucleus of Turkey Run State Park. Salmon Lusk and his family were successful in their business. Around 1840 they built a two-story brick house that still stands. As prosperous as they were, the Lusks were also like typical settlers. They had to work hard every day to provide food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their children.

Mounds State Park

Members of the Bronnenberg family were the first people of European descent to settle on the land that is now Mounds State Park. They lived on and worked the land for several generations. Their legacy is the purposeful preservation of the mounds and the Federal-style brick home that remains standing on the property.

Frederick Bronnenberg, Sr. came to the United States from Germany around 1800 and made his home in Pennsylvania. There he met and married Barbara Easter. In 1820, Bronnenberg took his family and headed for Illinois. The Bronnenbergs were just one of numerous families and individuals moving westward from the increasingly crowded eastern United States. With several new states added to the Union, which now comprise the American Midwest, people were motivated to move west for inexpensive, arable land. The surviving evidence does not indicate exactly why the Bronnenbergs stayed in Anderson, Indiana rather than going on to Illinois. Two stories are that either an oxcart had broken or that a child had died, thus prompting them to cut their journey short. Their first house was a log cabin set on land they cleared for farming. Over time, he also opened a tannery, sawmill, gristmill, carding mill and distillery. The Bronnenbergs produced 12 children, and nine survived. Frederick Sr. died in 1853.

Upon his death, the family farm passed to his son, Frederick Bronnenberg, Jr., who along with his wife Hulda, raised six children there. It was Frederick, Jr. who built the brick house that stands today. The mounds that are preserved today are here because Frederick, Sr. was intrigued by them and chose not to plow them under or allow people to plunder them. When Frederick, Jr. died in 1901 he left the property to his son Ransom.

The Bronnenberg House was built circa 1840 in the Federal style using local materials, as was common in the period. The most common floorplan for a farmhouse in this period is called the I-House. The name comes from the style’s popularity in states that begin with the letter ‘I’, i.e., Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. A normal I-House was generally one room deep, two rooms wide and two stories tall. The Bronnenberg House is a typical I-House. The foundation is made from limestone. Poplar and oak provided the wood, and local mud was fired into the bricks. In 1870, under Frederick, Jr.’s leadership, another room was added to the house. Ransom added a second story to the addition that his father had made on the back of the house. The farm had a number of standard outbuildings: a summer kitchen, springhouse, corncrib and barn.

Spring Mill State Park

In the early 19th century, Thomas and Cuthbert Bullitt bought land and began to build a gristmill. A village soon formed. A few years later, the Bullitts sold the land and mill to the Montgomery brothers of Philadelphia. The Montgomery brothers hired the Hamers to operate the mill. The Montgomery family built the distillery and tavern. Six years later, the Hamers bought the land and mill from the Montgomery family. In 1865, George Donaldson, a wealthy Scotsman, purchased 200 acres near the village. The land was wooded and had many caves. Donaldson believed in protecting the natural beauty of the land. His efforts led to the area being made a nature preserve named in his honor. In 1927, Spring Mill State Park was established and the Department of Conservation set about reconstructing the historic village. The village we see today has been built to represent the historic village. Restoration of the village structures and the mill was undertaken using what could be salvaged from the village. To fill out the village the park purchased other 19th century log buildings from around the state.

Lincoln State Park

The Lincoln family came from Kentucky and was part of a community that settled in southern Indiana after statehood in 1816. The community included several farms, a general store and post office, a mill, schools, and a church. Young Abraham Lincoln’s father, Thomas Lincoln, built the church’s cabinets, pulpit and window casings. Another resident of the area was James Gentry Sr. He who was born in North Carolina in 1788 and lived in Kentucky before his arrival in Indiana. Gentry was the proprietor of a shop. He hired Abraham Lincoln as a clerk. Gentry had Lincoln deliver a flatboat of goods to New Orleans. Lincoln later related that on this journey he saw a slave auction, which he found to be quite disturbing. William Jones, another area resident, was born in 1803 in Indiana. As a young man, Jones moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he worked for a wholesale dry goods company. In 1827, he returned to Indiana and opened a store in Spencer County. The hamlet of Jonesboro formed around Jones’s store. Jones became an important merchant because he shipped farmers’ produce to markets along the Ohio River and on flatboats to New Orleans. Abraham Lincoln worked for Jones, butchering hogs and salting and packing the meat. Jones was an influential political figure. He supported the Whig Party. Jones shared his views with Abraham Lincoln, who also became a Whig. When the Whig Party was dismantled, Lincoln and Jones joined the Republican Party.

See Activity 1.

The Huggart Settlement was established by Samuel Huggart, a free African-American. He came here with his family in 1834 at a time when many African-Americans were enslaved in the South. But voices were beginning to rise up and question the ethics and place of slavery in the United States. The Huggart Settlement was part of a community of anti-slavery Quakers who played a prominent role in the Abolition movement.

Other African-American families settled and farmed the land alongside the Huggarts. These families sent their children to nearby schools, attended area churches and worked with white neighbors. When residents of the settlement died, they were buried in Porter-Rea Cemetery, which is located within Potato Creek State Park. The cemetery was established in 1854 and named for two families who owned adjacent land. The cemetery was not segregated by race. Black and white were buried next to each other. This was unusual for the time.

The population of Indiana has grown and changed over time. The number has increased but the demographics have also shifted to represent a larger diversity of people. In addition, the places people live has changed. Between 1860 and 1960, the population of Indiana grew from 1.3 million people to 4.6 million people. Indiana has, along with the rest of the country, become increasingly urban and decreasingly rural. In that period of 100 years, the number and types of jobs people could find were more industrial and less agricultural. From 1860 to 1960, the population of Indiana became less white, Protestant, and Western European and increasingly black, Hispanic, Jewish, and Eastern European. These demographic changes impacted transportation means and routes. The railroad became important in this period. In the latter part of this period, the automobile became the primary means of transportation. That changed where people lived. Indiana and the rest of the United States became more suburban and urban, and even less rural.

Indiana was largely covered in deep forests with no roads when settlers first arrived. Rivers provided the earliest routes for travelers. Canoes, rafts and other boats carried people and goods in and out of Indiana. New settlers would travel up a river to establish a farm. Soon, grain and pork would be transported back down the river
for sale. Rafts of cut logs would pass out of the frontier to be used for timber.

Some rivers were dammed and a water-powered mill would grind grain into flour and logs into boards. Rivers were abundant in fish for eating. New settlements grew along Indiana’s waterways.

Ferry boats helped people cross rivers. They were replaced with covered bridges and, later, iron bridges. Rivers could flood after a heavy rain or snowmelt. Mills and growing towns were occasionally destroyed by flooding.

In recent times, flooding was controlled by damming rivers and large streams, creating a reservoir. Large reservoirs could hold flood waters, gradually releasing them over time. Reservoirs also provided drinking-water supplies for growing communities, and fishing and boating opportunities.