CHAPTER IV.

                    EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND PIONEER NOTES.

    The earliest settlements in the county were necessarily made on the
higher lands, largely on the bluffs and knolls along the river and other
streams. At that day the lowlands and flats were entirely too wet for
settlement and cultivation. The pioneers planted their habitations upon
the seemingly most inviting and promising dry spots, shunning, as prac-
tically worthless, the lands which by the lapse of time and the arts of
civilization, have become the most desirable and valuable. Usually, a
spring was sought, the location of which determined the point of settle-
rient. Many of these originally preferred and selected sites for homes
are now the least valuable lands in the county. An additional reason
for the first settler, or squatter, choosing to plant his primitive cabin on
the elevations, or bluffs, adjacent to the streams was that such a location
afforded him the more convenient facilities for fishing and trapping, his
reliance, in part, for a livelihood during the first years of his experience in
the wilderness.
It is generally conceded that to David Thomas belongs the honor of
having made the original settlement on Eel river, on the bluff on which
his son, James P. Thomas, lived up to the time of his death and where
James M. Campbell now resides. As nearly as can be ascertained, he
came there in the fall of 1818. Two years prior to that time, Mr.
Thomas came to White river, near the present site of Spencer, and was
also the first white man to settle within the bounds of Owen county. In
the spring of 1819, Samuel Rizley came from Knox county and located at
the point which we have already designated. Here, on the 13th day of
February, 1820, was born to him a daughter, Eliza Rizley, the first white
child born within the territory of the county, who was later the wife of
Simeon Stacy, residing on the river, near the place of her birth. As
early as 1821, the highlands and bluffs on the west side of the river, south
of Splunge creek, were settled by Peter and John Cooprider, Robert Grose
and James Delay, and a year later by James Briley, Elijah Rawley and
Elijah Mayfield. Peter Cooprider built the first cabin within the present
limits of Lewis township, on the Kossuth bluff, near the Centennial Mill,
at a point very near the present residence of Alfred Shidler. In the
original entries at the land office at Vincennes by the Coopriders a mis-
take was made in descriptions, by which the government conveyed the
wrong tracts of land, as afterward discovered by Surveyor William
Maxwell. As the sequel to this error the Coopriders abandoned their
location on the west side of the river, crossed over and settled on the
Sand Hill, in 1823, on the site of the present town of Middlebury. Sub-

                                    13