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As the home of Indiana's second oldest settlement, Perry County was carved out of the wilderness by Swiss, German and French pioneers who were attracted to this region's wealth of natural resources and its easy access to river transportation. Their rugged, enduring spirit remains today as the foundation for life in Perry County.
A Brief History of Perry County
Perry County is located in the extreme south-central part of Indiana approximately 150 miles south of Indianapolis, 80 miles west of New Albany, and 50 miles east of Evansville. It is bounded on the east and north by Crawford County, to the northwest by Dubois County, and to the west by Spencer County. The southern margin is limited by the Ohio River with 50 miles of riverfront.
The Natural Setting
Perry County is classified as Crawford Uplands and Perry County has the distinction of being the roughest county in Indiana. Perry County was totally outside the glacier area and relatively unaffected by the glacial run off in the lower part of the Ohio Valley. The county is somewhat of a refuge area. For instance, the fringed Green Briar is found only in Perry, Crawford, and Harrison Counties. The Buckthorn is found only in Perry County and the Sourwood only in Perry and Floyd. Mountain Laurel also grows in Perry County.
Prehistoric Period
It appears certain that a large portion of Perry County was inhabited by early Indian culture. The Archaic and early Woodland are well represented in archaeological material. The later cultures used Perry County as a hunting area and did not establish villages, preferring the rolling bottomlands and terraces further to the west.
Political
The landmass of Perry County was a portion of the area ceded to the United States by the Indiana Treaties made at Fort Wayne in 1803 and at Vincennes in 1804. The land then became subject to settlement by hunters and squatters. The land was surveyed in 1804 and 1805. Most of the Indians left about this time. The territorial Legislature in 1814 established Perry County and named it after Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, who had defeated the British on Lake Erie in 1813, during the second war with England. Perry County at first included much of the southern portions of Dubois and Crawford and about half of Spencer Counties. By further acts of the legislators, Dubois was created in 1817, Spencer and Crawford in 1818. Since then there have been no changes in the boundaries of Perry County. It is interesting to note that when the Lincoln family migrated to Indiana in 1816, they arrived at what then was Perry County. Troy was the first county seat, 1814-1819, followed by Rome from 1819-1859, Cannelton from 1859-1994, and Tell City, 1994-present.
Early Beginnings
As early as 1795, some white settlers located near what is now Troy. Prior to 1803, native Perry Countians were the Pinkeshaws, an Indiana tribe belonging to the Miami Indiana Confederacy. The first settlement of any consequence was Troy. Although unable to document it, there was probably a small settlement there as early as 1803. Troy prospered and was a busy community engaged in manufacturing of various kinds, and thrived particularly as a port for receiving and shipping goods and produce to the interior. The Ohio River from the beginning to the present was of extreme importance to Perry County. All commerce moved on the river. It was the vital link with the rest of the world. The first railroad train did not reach Perry County until 1888 while packet service continued all the way up to 1932. In 1811 Robert Fulton’s first steamboat on the Ohio River, The New Orleans, took on coal a short distance above the present site of Tell City. His brother Abraham Fulton is buried in the Troy Cemetery. In 1818 there was mail service between Louisville, Kentucky - Troy, Evansville, and Harmonie (New Harmony).
An accident on the river brought to Perry County a famous hero of the American Revolution. On May 9, 1825, a steamer mechanic, carrying the Marquis de Lafayette on a tour of newly formed states, struck the jagged edge of Rock Island, a mile or so above the present Cannelton Dam. While every article of baggage and clothing was lost, all passengers and crew were rescued. Lafayette spent the night in the log cabin of Perry County Pioneer, James Cavender. The next day, the Marquis de Lafayette was visited by many families, all of whom were eager for a glimpse of the noble revolutionary hero. The memory of the general’s visit is kept alive by a marker at Lafayette Spring, the spot near the Cavender cabin where the hero received his local visitors.
In 1826 a young Abraham Lincoln worked for a James Taylor, who ran a packing house and ferry on the Anderson River, just a few hundred yards below Troy. Further up the Anderson River, which borders the Perry-Spencer County line, sits a unique structure that was built around 1865. Huffman Mill Covered Bridge is the last of several covered bridges in the area. Just a short distance away is the site of the old Huffman Mill. For years it was the only mill in existence in the area. People traveled for miles to have their grain ground into flour on the banks of the Anderson River. Abraham Lincoln visited the Huffman Mill frequently. It has been said Abe’s father once traded a jug of moonshine whiskey for a day’s mill work.
Rome, first established as Washington, then Franklin, then Rome in 1819, was of importance until the county seat was removed in 1859. The old Court House still stands. It is constructed of brown, hand-made bricks, standing on a high foundation. It is a two-story square structure with octagonal cupola strongly resembling the old state capitol in Corydon.
Cannelton, established in 1838 owes its beginning to the coal deposits found there, along with the river for transportation. The Indiana Cotton Mills, organized in 1848 was an important part of Cannelton and Perry County for many years. The stone building erected in 1851 was for quite a while the largest building in Indiana. Interior walls, made of sandstone slabs five feet thick, make the building somewhat of a fortress. Back in its busiest time, some 400 employees, mostly women, tended 372 looms working 12-hour days, six days per week. The mill produced a variety of cotton cloth, including uniforms for the Union Army during the Civil War. Clay products were another early manufacturing endeavor at Cannelton.
Also located in Cannelton are St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, built in 1845, and St. Michael’s Catholic Church, built in 1859. Both are still in use today. The Court House was moved to Cannelton in 1859 and remained there until 1994. Each of these four buildings is constructed out of sandstone.
During the busy days of steamboat traffic, steamers would dock along the shores of Derby, Rono (now Magnet) and Troy. The years of 1850 - 1860 saw the heyday of steamboat travel, and it was not uncommon to sight as many as six steamboats at once from Cannelton’s shore. Travelers purchased wood for fuel and supplies from many sawmill operators in the county. The operators of the American Cannel Coal Company advertised their products, mined on Coal Haven (Cannelton), as being much superior to the commonly used wood. The sale of this coal increased slowly, though steadily, and most of the boats continued to use wood for many years. Wood was kept cut and corded to be sold for this purpose.
Tell City, established in 1858 is the youngest town in the area; a unique town in that it was planned and founded by the Swiss Colonization society. Shares were sold in the Society, land was purchased, and a town was laid out. "It was really organized for the common benefit of the poorer class of our countrymen, which consists mostly of intelligent farmers and mechanics." Tell City was intended as a manufacturing town and so it remains today.
Although the Swiss started the town, many German people joined them. With the Germans being in the majority, the town was really more German than Swiss. Tell City soon became the largest town in Perry County. Thru its factories, employment was offered to much of the surrounding county. The river offered a means to ship and receive the articles of commerce. Its first growth was spectacular, though the civil war, the depression, and the isolation of the area, all contributed to a much slower but continuous growth through the years. Tell City retains much of the Swiss-German flavor brought by those early settlers of the city. A statue and fountain in front of City Hall commemorates the legendary Swiss hero, William Tell, for whom the city is named.
Scattered about in Perry County are numerous villages and towns; their beginnings due to location by streams, fords, or good farm land. The churches also played a part in establishing some of these communities. Represented in Perry County, besides the Germans and the Swiss were the smaller groups from France, England, and Belgium. St. Croix and Leopold were early French settlements.
Quite a few years ago the majority of Perry County’s citizens and the Federal Government agreed that a large portion of Perry County should do what it has always done best; grow trees and offer recreational facilities for the people. The National Forest Service through the years has acquired about 50,000 acres in Perry County. Here hardwood trees are growing and producing lumber. Here also are offered recreational camping, hunting, fishing, hiking and horseback trails. Four large man-made flood control lakes have been built.
The completion of the Cannelton Locks and Dam in 1975 raised the level of the Ohio River 25 feet behind the dam. This has made many small streams suitable for fishing. There are miles of beautiful driveways in Perry County. Along with smaller game, deer and wild turkeys have been reintroduced. Farmers still till the bottomlands. The 1913 and 1937 floods were major disasters for Cannelton and Tell City, so floodwalls have been built for the protection of these communities.
The three larger towns continue to offer employment through manufacturing, retailing, and services. In the beginning, Perry County’s citizens used the natural resources at hand, coal, lumber, clay and the river, and that continues today, with the added production of crushed limestone in the eastern part of the county.
Perry County still finds itself in a rather remote area, while most of its population still lives 25 miles from an interstate highway. The cultural inclinations of the early citizens are indicated by the names of the streets in Tell City such as, Pestalozzi, Mozart, Lafayette, Franklin, Guttenberg, Fulton and others.
1849 Adams County Retrospect - Based on "Indiana Gazetteer," published by E. Chamberlain
Perry County, organized in 1814, was named in honor of the gallant Commodore Oliver H. Perry. It contains about 400 square miles, and is bounded north by Dubois and Crawford, east by Crawford and the Ohio River, south by the Ohio, and west by Spencer and Dubois. The civil townships are Troy, Deer Creek, Anderson, Clark, Tobin, Union, Oil and Leopold. The population in 1830 was 3,378, in 1840, 4,655, and at this time about 8,000. With the exception of about 20,000 acres of bottomland along the Ohio and Anderson, and some tracts of wet beech lands at the heads of the streams, the balance of the county is very hilly. On the bottoms and a portion of the hill sides and tops, the soil is rich, but much the largest part of the county is what is usually denominated poor land, though there is but a small part of it which may not, with careful farming, be made productive. The timber is generally of an excellent quality, and the best of oak and poplar are found on the hills; and in the bottoms, sugar, beech, ash and walnut. The surplus articles exported are corn, hay, pork and various kinds of marketing supplied mostly by the river bottoms, for as yet very little surplus is brought from the interior. The trade in wood and coal for the steamboats on the Ohio is becoming large, and employs a great many hands.
There are in the county seventeen grist and sawmills, twenty-five stores, ten groceries, fifteen warehouses, five lawyers, fourteen physicians, twenty preachers and 250 mechanics. There are eleven churches, of which five are Baptist, two Methodist, three Catholic, and one Unitarian. The taxable land in the county amounts to 75,665 acres, while the remaining 179,000 acres has either been too recently purchased to be taxed, or has either been too recently purchased to be taxed, or has been selected for Canal lands, or still belongs to the United States, which is the case with the most of it.
In the first settlement of Perry, the business of hunting engaged the attention of many of the people, to procure even their necessary food, and on occasions, the women were not less fearless and efficient than the other sex. Among the incidents that occurred in the early history of the county, is the following: John Archibald and his wife, having succeeded in treeing a bear, cut down the tree, which unfortunately fell on the husband, broke his leg, and held him fast to the ground. In the hurry of the moment the wife never noticed the accident but she and the dogs pursued the bear for a mile or two, when he was brought to bay and she came up and killed him. For the first time she then missed her husband, and hastily returning relived him from his unpleasant situation. Mr. A. is still alive, though he never obtained the perfect use of his limbs again.
The abundant and easily accessible veins of coal in Perry County, which, with other facilities, are described under the listing about Cannelton, early attracted the attention of capitalists to the expediency of establishing manufactories there on a large scale, and the Indiana Pottery, for making Queensware, was built up near Troy some twelve years ago, at a heavy expense. Workmen were brought from England, who became unmanageable here, and faithless or incompetent agents rendered the effort a failure in a great measure; but the company is not yet discouraged, and they still expect to prosecute the business with success.
The American Cannel Coal Company, with capital of $500,000, was incorporated in 1836. This Company proceeded to purchase 7,000 acres of land, of which 5,000 acres are coal lands. They commenced the working of coal, and last year employed eighty miners, and sold at the bank over 400,000 bushels of coal. They laid out the town, the site of which is on a bend of the Ohio, and embraces over 1,000 acres between the river and the coal hills. Lots of from two to four acres, above the highest floods, have been laid out for cotton and other mills, from which railroads will be made to the coal and also to the landing, which is a very fine one. In providing for the growth of the town and the encouragement of manufacturers, the rent for coal and of only one cent per bushel for twenty-five years will be charged, while the cost for digging is only two cents per bushel. The inducements for building up a large manufacturing town are power, ample, cheap and certain cheap food; facilities for transportation; nearness to the market to be supplied and the materials to be manufactured; healthy situation, with the best and cheapest building materials. The Legislature of Indiana have also granted twelve charters of the most liberal character, for manufacturing establishments, and two of these, the Cannelton Cotton Mill, and the Indiana Cotton Mill, have been organized and will soon be in operation. The former will contain 10,500 spindles, and corresponding machinery for making sheeting, and will employ about 375 operatives. The factory will be of stone 272 feet long, 65 feet wide, and four stories high. This building, with the warehouse, superintendent's house, and twenty-five boarding houses for operatives, all not in progress, will occupy a lot of eight acres on the bank of the Ohio, where the navigation is rarely interrupted, and within one-third of a mile of an inexhaustible and rich coal bed.
The Indiana Cotton Mill is to contain, at present 2000 spindles, and will make coarse tickings and cotton flannel. General C. T. James, of Providence, Rhode Island, is the Contractor for these works, and A. McGregor, of Newport, Rhode Island, the Engineer. The machinery will be of the most perfect kind, from the establishment of W. Mason & Co., Taunton, Massachusetts.
This enterprise is intended to be but the beginning of a movement that may result in giving the control of the price of cotton to the country, where it is produced. It may, too, operate as a check to over production, by giving cotton planters other means of investment besides lands and slaves, and it may result in changing he character of the present cotton manufacturing districts of the world, for the coal districts in the vicinity, and the fertile and healthy regions around, present opportunities for this increase of manufactures to an unlimited extent. The wealth of Indiana my eventually be concentrated in this part of the State, which was so long overlooked by emigrants. The present improvements at Cannelton woe their origin to General Seth Hunt, of New Hampshire, a man of singular intelligence and energy, who, in connection with Messrs. Hobart, Williams and Russell, then wealthy capitalists of Boston, formed the American Cannel Coal Company, purchased the lands, and procured several entries to be opened to the coal strata. If the respective companies do not calculate on too large profits, and relying on these, neglect the system, attention and economy which manufacturing establishments everywhere require, they will scarcely fail of success. It is this neglect that has occasioned so many failures in the efforts to build up manufactories in the west.
1938 Adams County Retrospect - Based on "Indiana Review," published by the State Legislature
Perry County was one of the important industrial counties of Indiana in the early days as a result of its location in the coal belt and its transportation facilities offered by the Ohio River. For the most part the almost inexhaustible coal resources have been only partially utilized. Among other Perry County resources affecting the county's commercial activities are the sandstone and clay, however, farming is the principal industry of the county.
Perry County is about centrally located among the group of southernmost Indiana counties bordering the Ohio River. Its area is 384 square miles, divided into seven townships. The incorporated cities are Cannelton, 2,265; Tell City, 4,873; town: Troy, 562; Total County population in 1890 was 18,420; 1900, 18,788; 1910, 18,078; 1920, 16,692; 1930, 16,625.
Cannelton is an Ohio River town located seventy miles [actually it's 49 miles] east of Evansville. The city is served by one railroad. Its industries include coalmines, sandstone, quarrying, cotton mills, furniture factories, and pottery and sewer works. Cannelton was the boomtown of the American Cannel Coal Company, which owned a tract of seven thousand acres, one thousand of which was selected and platted as the town of Cannelton. The abundant and easily accessible veins of coal attracted the attention of capitalists to this section and the Legislatures of the early 1830s granted liberal charters and many large enterprises, with several million dollars capital, were launched, notable among which were the Indiana Cotton Mills and the American Cannel Coal Company. Some of the optimistic claims made at that time have a familiar ring today. Regarding one of the enterprises that was being exploited the following was published [the following references the 1849 Retrospect presented if full on another page of this site] : "… The mill is to contain 2,000 spindles and make coarse ticking and flannel. …This enterprise is intended to be but the beginning of a movement which may result in giving the control of the price of cotton to the county where it is produced. It may, too, operate as a check to overproduction by giving planters other means of investment besides lands and slaves, and may result in changing the character of the present cotton manufacturing districts of the world, for the coal districts in this vicinity and the fertile and healthy regions around present opportunities for the increase of manufactures to an unlimited extent. The wealth of Indiana may be eventually concentrated in this part of the state, which was so long overlooked by the emigrants." And to this an early historian added: "The home market that will here be made for our agricultural products, and the capital and population which will be attracted from abroad by this affluent combination of manufacturing advantages, warrants the anticipation that Cannelton at no distant day will become a large and important manufacturing city." Thus, Perry County holds the record for first bringing Indiana and its lavish opportunities before the world.
Tell City also is located on the Ohio River. It is forty-five miles east of Evansville and is served by one railroad. Today it is the county's most important manufacturing center. Among its industries are factories manufacturing furniture, spokes, hubs, laboratory supplies, canned goods, and mills producing woolen goods, flour, and planing materials.
Abraham Lincoln spent part of his life in this county, operating a ferry across the Anderson River. Among the interesting points in Perry County is LaFayette Springs, a site on the Ohio where LaFayette was shipwrecked. There are numerous natural beauty sites, which are typical of the river counties.
Perry County had twenty-eight manufacturing establishments, according to the federal census figures of 1935. These employed 1,389 wage earners on payrolls totaling $881,691. A total of 24,423 head of livestock was reported. The total county tax valuation for 1936 was $7,244,690.
Courthouse History
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