.
On a mid-summer day in 1808, a group of people and a number of pack horses loaded with Indian trade goods forded the Whitewater River and moved north along the high bluff on the western side. Included in the entourage were two white men, John Conner and Michel Peletier, their wives and children, and several Delaware Indians. They were leaving their store near Cedar Grove and looking for a new location in the Indian Territory and nearer the villages of the Delaware Indians. The group moved up the west bank to a bluff over-looking the river where they made camp. For the next several days they worked on the construction of a large, two-story log cabin. Based on the research of J.L. Heineman, this cabin was probably in the middle of present day Eastern Avenue at the west end of Charles Street. This cabin was to be the center of Conner's fur trading business for several years. This was the beginning of ConnersvilleSince the retreat of the last glacier some 10,000 to 12,000 year ago, what is now Indiana had been inhabited by nomadic bands of Indians; they hunted, fished, and farmed this area. These people have been classified as Eastern Woodland Indians, and by the time the white man entered the region the Miami, the Shawnee, and the Pottawatomi were the dominant tribes. During, and after the Revolutionary War several clans of the Delaware settled along the West Fork of White River; Muncie, Anderson, and Daleville were all Delaware villages. John Conner John Conner was born on August 27, 1775, at the village of Schoenbrun, in what is now the State of Ohio. Schoenbrun was a community founded by Moravian missionaries in an attempt to bring Christianity to the Delaware Indians. In 1781, the Indians and the Moravians, including the Conners, moved to the Detroit area. John and brother, William, left the Conner farm near Detroit and settled among the Delaware along the West Fork of White River in the newly-created Delaware dialects, and both were married to Delaware women. They went into the fur trading business in the Indian villages along the West Fork.
|
In the first half century of its existence Connersville grew from a log trading post to a flourishing town of 2,119 with another 8,000 people in the county.Growth had been slow but steady, with the canal responsible for a rapid increase in population and industry. There were 13 turnpikes in operation in the county by 1856, and two newspapers were published. A large number of churches were thriving, and the city purchased 14 acres on the north side of town for a "town cemetery." John J. McFarlan arrived in 1856 and established the McFarlan Buggy Company and the Roots Brothers began the manufacture of rotary positive blowers in 1859. |
1861 - Fort Sumter fired on - Fayette County boys begin to volunteer |