MADISON COUNTY, INDIANA
Sesqui Memos
Anderson Herald and Anderson Daily Bulletin( Anderson, IN ) Wed., Sept. 5, 1973; page 2
-The first Courthouse in Anderson was completed and accepted by the county commissioners in January, 1832.
-The contract for the erection of the first poorhouse in Madison County was awarded April 7,1831, to John Shaul, whose bid was $20.
-The first newspaper in Madison County, the Federal Union, was started in Anderson in 1834 by T, J. Langdon.
-The first foreign born citizen to receive his naturalization papers in Madison County was Thomas Carlton.
-The first papers were taker out July 7, 1839, and he received his citizenship Aug. 15, 1840.
-The first company of volunteers for service in the Civil War reported to the Governor Aug;. 17, 1861.
This company afterward became Company E, Eighth Indiana Infantry
-The first medical society in Madison County was organized . Nov. 1,1862.
-The first mails into Summitville were carried on horseback Strawtown by horseback over "blazed" trails through the woods.
Daniel Dwiggins was the first mail rider. Then Caleb May and Kuhn Slagle began running a stage line between
Anderson and Marion, carrying the mails north one day and south the next.
Thomas Cranfill was the last man to carry the mails by vehicle prior to the building of the Cincinnati, Wabash and Michigan Railroad.
- Anderson as a manufacturing city was widely known for a number of produces, but few of them in the early
days attained such wide prominence as its computing cheese cutters.
Anderson had four cheese cutter factories and these four concerns practically monopolized the business.
All of these devices traced back directly or indirectly to the fertile mind of Harry Dunn, Anderson inventor.
- When the contract was let for Madison County's second courthouse on April 5,1837, the instrument set forth that the structure was to be "of brick,
44 feet square, two stories high, all to be like the courthouse at Noblesville, except for the court chamber on the lower floor;
the tower to be like that on the courthouse at Indianapolis and the cupola, which is to be like that on the courthouse at Centerville."