200 years ago today in Washington County, Indiana Territory, Benjamin Newkirk was clearing timber and brush from his developing farmstead in a valley cut into the knobs by Buffalo Creek which flowed to the northwest to the East Fork of White River.  His land claim was for the northwest quarter of Section 28, T4N, R3E in present day Jefferson Township, Washington County, Indiana.  Newkirk noticed that there was very sandy soil that laid at the north edge of this part of Buffalo Bottoms and the south face of the knobs. This sand was a windblown deposit that was blown in from the White River glacial outwash thousands of years ago. 

Benjamin Newkirk’s father, Peter Newkirk, was of Dutch [not German] descent.  The original spelling of the name was Van Nieuwkercke. Peter Newkirk was from the Dutch community in the Hudson River Valley between Albany and New York City.  He moved to Virginia down the Great Wagon Road and there served in the Revolutionary War.  After the Kentucky Bluegrass was officially opened for settlement after the war, he brought his family to Kentucky.

Benjamin Newkirk married into the Sparks family after the death of his first wife.  Benjamin Newkirk and his brother, Richard Newkirk, and his brothers in law, Richard Sparks and Moses Sparks, came to the Indiana Territory in about 1811 from Bullitt County, Kentucky.  They settled in the very northern part of what was then Harrison County, Indiana at “the Forks” which was just downstream from the confluence of the Driftwood Fork of White River and the Muscatatuck River.  At this location the East Fork of the White River breached the Knobstone Escarpment where the Mt. Carmel fault had displaced the underlying strata by about 200 feet.  This crack in the earth’s crust placed soft Borden Shale next to harder Harrodsburg Limestone.  When the Illinoisan Glacier blocked the northwestern flow of the Kentucky/Teays River about 100,000 years ago, the river flow ponded and then overtopped the Knobs at this weak spot and the East Fork of White River Valley was formed.

This geological configuration resulted in a river ford between a ridge of the Knobs which became an animal and then an Indian Trail.  The Newkirks and Sparks thought this might present an opportunity for access to markets for the crops of the frontier.  Many of Richard Sparks neighbors petitioned the US Congress in 1813 for the making of a land grant to him along White River so that he could build and operate a grist mill as the nearest mill was over 25 miles away [Beck’s Mill].  The petition was not acted upon but Richard Sparks took up land at the ford and then operated a ferry there for many years.  The south branch of the ancient trail that crossed this ford became known as Sparks Ferry Road.

In the early days of the Indiana Territory, this trail brought danger as well as opportunity as Indians, both peaceful and hostile, used the trail to travel from the Wabash Valley to the Ohio Valley. In 1813, Daniel and Jacob Soliday, were earning their rent by clearing land along the Walnut Ridge Trail for Richard Newkirk and Robert Ellison.  Tradition says that one of these Soliday brothers had boasted of killing some of the followers of Tecumseh and The Prophet at the Battle of Tippecanoe.  Word of this had spread northwest to the remnants of various tribes associated with Tecumseh’s alliance.  Some of these warriors followed this trail across White River to Walnut Ridge just as some had the previous fall on their way to the attack of the Pigeon Roost settlement.  The two Soliday brothers were working together that day searching the woods for a mare that had foaled a colt.  On Good Friday 1813, the Soliday brothers were ambushed and killed by these native marauders. They were the last settlers killed by Indians in Washington County.  A search of the records of the Territorial militia does not indicate that either of the Soliday brothers were at the Battle of Tippecanoe.  If they were not, their youthful braggadocio made to neighbors along a native trail cost them their lives. 

THE "FORKS"

                                                SOLIDAY BROTHERS GRAVE

                                                  PIONEER FERRY