Dearborn County, Indiana entries from:
The Indiana Gazetteer or Topographical Dictionary. Indianapolis : E. Chamberlain, 1849.
Digitized copy online at Internet Archive
AURORA, a beautiful village on the Ohio river, at the mouth of Hogan creek, in Dearborn county, containing about 1,600 inhabitants. It was laid out in 1819, and having a fine country back of it, has for many years exported large quantities of produce. It is twenty-six miles below Cincinnati, and eighty-six south-east of Indianapolis. It has just suffered very severely from the ravages of the Cholera.
CENTRE, a township in Dearborn county, with a population of 2,250.
CESAR CREEK, a south-western township in Dearborn county, has a population of 400.
CLAY, a township in Dearborn county, with a population of 800.
DEARBORN COUNTY was organized in 1802, and named after the soldier and statesman, Gen. Henry Dearborn, at the time the Secretary of War. It lies in the south-east corner of the State, is bounded east by the Ohio river and the State of Ohio, south by Ohio county, west by Ripley and north by Franklin, and contains 307 square miles. In 1830 it had 14,573 inhabitants; in 1840, 19,327, and at this time only about the same number, as the county of Ohio has since been created from its limits. Dearborn county is divided into thirteen civil townships, Lawrenceburgh, Harrison, Logan, Miller, Centre, Laughery, Manchester, York, Kelso, Jackson, Sparta, Clay and Cesar’s Creek.
The bottoms on the Ohio, Miami and White Water, about 13,000 acres in all, and the west and north-west parts of the county, are level or slightly undulating; the rest broken and hilly. The land in the vicinity of the rivers and creeks, both in the bottoms and on the hills, is a rich, loamy soil, and is not surpassed in the amount of its produce; the interior is well adapted to hay, wheat, &c. The corn is sold to distillers or fed to hogs at home, and much of the wheat made into flour by the millers. It is estimated that three distilleries in the county make $200,000 worth of whiskey and fatten $50,000 worth of pork annually. Of the articles exported from the county in a year, it has been ascertained that they amounted, in 1847, to 131,318 bushels of wheat, 152,802 bushels of oats, 11,000 tons of hay, 500 cattle, 1,500 sheep and 25,000 hogs. To these add the barreled pork, flour, whisky, and other articles exported from the county, and the whole will amount to $1,500,000 a year, though some of the articles, perhaps one-fourth, are the products of the interior counties.
There are in the county sixty stores, forty groceries, forty ware-houses, eight grist mills, six saw mills, five distilleries, one oil mill, one woolen factory, 460 mechanics, fifteen lawyers, fifteen physicians, fifteen preachers of the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Catholics. There is a flourishing County Seminary, established at Wilmington in 1835, with fifty students, a good High School in Lawrenceburgh, with about the same number, and common schools are established throughout the county.
There is no land belonging to the United States, or which is not taxable, in the county.
DILLSBOROUGH, a small town in Clay township, Dearborn county, fifteen miles south-west of Lawrenceburgh.
DOVER, a small town in Kelso township, Dearborn county.
HARRISON, a township in Dearborn county, population 760.
HARRISON, a small town partly in Dearborn county and partly in the State of Ohio, twelve miles north of Lawrenceburgh.
HOGAN, a mill stream in Dearborn county, rising in the west part of the county and running east into the Ohio at Aurora.
JACKSON, a township in Dearborn county, population 1,155.
JOHNSON’S FORK, a mill stream in Franklin and Dearborn, running into White Water from the north-east, two miles above Harrison.
KELSO, a township in Dearborn county, with a population of 1,350.
LAUGHERY, a township in Dearborn county, population 1,050.
LAWRENCEBURGH, the Seat of Justice of Dearborn county, is situated on the Ohio river, twenty-two miles below Cincinnati, two miles west of the east line of the State, and eighty-seven south-east of Indianapolis. It contains about 3,000 inhabitants. The large and fertile bottoms on the Ohio and Miami, in the vicinity, and the rich and well cultivated lands in the interior, and its being the outlet of the White Water Canal, furnish an immense amount of produce for exportation. See Dearborn county.
LOGAN, a township in Dearborn county, population 660.
MANCHESTER, an interior township in Dearborn county, population 2,700.
MANCHESTER, a beautiful country village in Dearborn county, nine miles north-west of Lawrenceburgh.
MILLER, a township in Dearborn, population 1,160.
MOORE’S HILL, a small town in Sparta township, Dearborn county, thirteen miles west north-west of Lawrenceburgh.
SPARTA, a township in Dearborn, population 1,800.
TANNERS’ CREEK rises in the north part of Dearborn and runs south-east into the Ohio river near Lawrenceburgh. By following the bed of this creek, an easy access for a railroad may be had to the table land in the interior of the State.
WILMINGTON, formerly the County Seat of Dearborn, is three miles west of Aurora and six south-west of Lawrenceburgh. It contains the County Seminary, established in 1835, with usually 50 students, and has a number of good private residences.
YORK, a township in Dearborn, population 750.