2nd Class: Transportation, Nature of the People of Knox County/Vincennes

Plank Roads were an 1850s fad; the railroads killed them off; they were easy to erode and had rotten wood.

The Chicago Road: Chicago Avenue in Vincennes was the beginning of this road; ends in Chicago with a street titled Vincennes Street.

Abner T. Ellis: This man was responsible for the railroads coming through Vincennes; he also made the Wabash navigable to steamboats from New Orleans (at least part of the year until the time of low water).

Other than French, two other main groups settled in Vincennes area:

Steamboats in the 1840s brought Germans to the area, escaping from German wars. They established churches in Vincennes, created the Harmony Society, and pulled together as they were labeled “Foreigners.” They also settled what was known as “Dutch Flats” in the Buntin Street area of Vincennes. (For more details on "Dutch Flats," see the information in the ebook version of Indiana: A Guide to the Hoosier State, --thanks to Bill Friggee for sending this information.)

Knox County is very Southern in nature. The people were politically from “The party of Andrew Jackson,” and were (and are today) independent, proud, uncooperative, argumentative type of people. This is the result of many people moving up here from Virgina, unlike the Northern part of Indiana who had a lot of people from the New England states.

Willow Street is the origin of the Red Banks Trace running south of Vincennes.

Fr. Somes book Old Vincennes recommended. (By Joseph Henry Vanderburgh Somes, titled Old Vincennes: The History of a Famous Old Town and its Glorious Past, available in local libraries.

Discussion of Baseline Road, East and West; when the state started laying our property as squares/sections (Note French surveys on map, very different concept).