200 years today the Circuit Court of
Washington County, Indiana Territory was still meeting at William Lindley’s
house south of the plat of Salem which was still being cleared and was
practically inaccessible to most of the new settlers. To alleviate this
problem, Governor Thomas Posey appointed 19 residents of our new county to act
as Justices of the Peace in April 1814. These appointees could read and write
and were able to prepare basic legal documents, conduct marriages, rule on
disputes with a value of less than $5 and enter convictions for minor crimes
and impose nominal fines. They conducted these proceedings in their homes and
were located throughout the County from the Harrison County line to the
Driftwood River. Their decisions could be appealed to the Circuit Court. These
Justices of the Peace were: Jesse Spurgin; James Young; Robert Ellison; John
Wright; David Fouts; Robert Catlin; Amos Thornburgh, William Robertson, Jesse
Roberts, Samuel Chambers, Zachariah Lindley, Edmund Hunter, John Beck, Enoch
Parr, John Coleman; Godlove Kamp, Samuel Huston, John Ketchum, and Cornelius
Williamson.
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