200 Years Ago in Washington County, Indiana

NOVEMBER 26, 1813

2001 years ago today in Washington County, Indiana Territory, three pioneers received their land patent deeds from the US General Land Office. These were Jesse Bogue, James Rodman and Adam Wible. These three settlers were representative of the Quaker, English and German backgrounds of the first residents of Washington County, Indiana.

Jesse Bogue had selected the southeast quarter of Section 34, T3N, R4E, in Washington Township of Harrison County, Indiana Territory as his land claim. This land was located in the headwaters of the Brock Creek Basin at the northeast edge of the Blue River Friends community. Today this farm is found on the south side of Broadway Road northeast of Salem. The owners of adjoining homesteads were Elisha Denny, John Denny, John Fleenor and Joshua Thompson. Bogue was a Friend from the Sutton Creek Meeting in Perquimans County, NC. He and his brother, Aaron, were part of the large contingent of Quakers who emigrated to the Indiana Territory from the coastal area by the Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. Jesse Bogue was single when he became a landowner in 1813. In April of 1816 he appeared with Anna White before the Blue River Meeting House congregation and announced their intentions of marriage. Anna White was the daughter of Caleb White who also had come to Indiana from Perquimans County, NC. The Blue River Friends designated Samuel Nicholson and Jehosaphat Morris to review the proposed marital union. Upon the recommendation of Nicholson and Morris, the marriage was sanctioned by the congregation and they were married on October 5, 1816.

James Thomas Rodman settled land in the southeast quarter of Section 18, T2N, R5E, in Washington Township, Harrison County, Indiana Territory. He liked the fact that his claim was in the highest part in the upper part of the waters of Blue River and not too far from the store at Royse’s Lick. His farm adjoined lands of John Robertson, Samuel Herron, Jacob Garriott, Thomas Hodges, Edmund Hensley and a renter of Thomas Carr. Rodman was born in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania but lived in Shelby County, Kentucky at the time he filed his Indiana land claim. He married Elizabeth Burton in 1809 while living in Kentucky. James Rodman built a small stockade on his land in 1812 in response to Governor Harrison’s executive order issued for the protection of settlers during the Tecumseh led uprising of 1811. He later bought the saw mill and 24 acres from William Lindley that was near the southwest corner of Salem on Royse’s Fork of Blue River. One the children of James and Elizabeth Burton Rodman was Thomas Jackson Rodman who was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Thomas Jackson Rodman invented the Rodman cannon and perforated cake gunpowder which gave the Union army a huge advantage in artillery during the Civil War.

Adam Wible was attracted to the rolling land on the border between the Mitchell Plain and the Crawford Upland. He purchased the northwest quarter of Section 4, T1N, R2E for the US government. Wible’s homestead is located today just west of Livonia on the south side of SR 56 at the Orange County line. Wible was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania of German parents (Weible). He was married in Nelson County, Kentucky in 1788 to Hanna Harris. They had six children but only one survived childhood. After his first wife died, Adam Wible married Jane VanCleave in 1795 in Shelby County Kentucky. She was a native of Rowan County, NC. Adam and Jane Wible had thirteen children but several of them died as young children. In 1820, there were ten members of the Adam Wible household. Adam Wible and his VanCleave inlaws were among the first to settle in the area of Livonia.

QUAKER HOME IN WHITE FAMILY IN

PERQUIMANS COUNTY, NC