JUNE 16, 1814

200 years ago today, Peter Hubbard was celebrating his second anniversary of taking title to his farm located on Brock Creek just northeast of the newly platted town of Salem which was to become the seat of government of Washington County, Indiana Territory.  George Brock had registered the claim for all four quarter sections of Section 8, T2N, R4E and then assigned his claim to the southeast quarter of Section 8 to Peter Hubbard who then received title from the United States on June 16, 1812.

Hubbard was of English extraction having been born in Frederick Co., Maryland in 1754.  His family moved to Pennsylvania and then to Albemarle County, Orange County, and Washington County all in Virginia.  Peter Hubbard and his brother Nicholas followed the Brocks from the panhandle of Virginia to the Indiana Territory in about 1810. Mary Hubbard who was a niece of Peter Hubbard married one of Adam Cauble’s sons, Adam Washington Cauble, and lived to be 100 years of age.

Unfortunately, Peter Hubbard who was a widower when he came to the Indiana Territory did not live long to enjoy the 160 acres he was clearing for a farm as he died in December of 1814.  Hubbard was most likely buried in the Brock Cemetery on a small knoll overlooking Brock Creek immediately west of his land. Peter Hubbard would have been the third burial in this cemetery as a daughter of George Brock, Catherine Brock Neideffer, and a nephew of George Brock, John Zink, were already interred there.  Hubbard’s brother, Nicholas, was appointed to administer his estate.

The farm that George Beck assigned to Peter Hubbard was crossed by the trail that led from the White River ford to Royse’s Lick.  The remnant of this trail is still visible on this land 200 years later.