CHAPTER II.

                    SUBDIVISIONS OF THE COUNTY.

    A congressional township is uniformly an area of thirty-six square
miles, as surveyed and mapped under an act of the Congress of the
United States. The civil township is of variable extent, of which the
area and boundaries are determined by the local authorities or by the
people themselves for convenience of administration in civil affairs. In
area and outline the congressional and civil township may be the same,
or the civil township may be more or less than the congressional. Clay
county is equal in extent to just ten congressional townships, compris-
ing eleven civil townships. Of the eleven townships of Clay county,
Jackson, Posey and Washington are congressional; Lewis, Harrison and
Perry are larger, Dick Johnson, Van Buren, Sugar Ridge, Cass and
Brazil are less.
    From lack of the necessary data no historically accurate account can
be given of the original subdivision of the territory of the county into
townships. At what date the first board of justices, or county commis-
sioners, was organized and proceeded to put in motion the wheels of local
government is not a matter of any existing public nor private record.
Doubtless, the work of organization moved but slowly. Though not posi-
tively known by any one now living, it is understood, that previous to the
building and use of the original court-house, the county board trans-
acted business at the house of David Thomas, on Eel river, where the
commission constituted by the act of organization had been instructed to
meet and proceed to locate the public buildings. Territorially, the
boundary lines of the first civil townships may have been defined and
made matter of record sometime in advance of the election of justices
and constables.
    Martin Bowles, one of the first settlers in the northwest part of the
county, who was accepted as authority in matters of primitive local his-
tory, said that the first election for justice of the peace in Posey township
took place in the fall of 1828, and that the whole north end of the county
was then comprised within this township. If Posey ranked as one of the
original subdivisions, then there were four—Washington, Perry, Harri-
son and Posey, named respectively, for the first president, the hero of the
signal victory on Lake Erie, and the first and last governors of Indiana
Territory. Otherwise, there were but three original townships—Harri-
son, including all the south end of the county, Washington and Perry,
comprising respectively, the east and west sections of the territory from
Harrison north to the county line, out of which Posey was carved a
year or two later.

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