Franklin Township - In the year 1822, the Burkhart brothers, David, Lewis, George, 
Henry and William came to this county from Greene County, Ky., by the way of the 
ancient river trail.  Henry and George settled on the north side, while David built his 
cabin within the borders of Franklin Township on the land on which the late Michael 
Canary so long lived, and ultimately died.  All three built cabins on the trail, and they 
have left their family name in Buckhart's Creek, in their old neighborhood.  About the 
time of the arrival of the Burkharts, came Levi Moore along the trail, from the south as 
far as the Big Spring (now Hopewell), whence he turned to the east and built a cabin on 
the high ground, a few hundred yards west of the place where the Bluff road crosses Young's 
Creek.  This cabin site has never ceased to be a place of residence.  It is now occupied by 
John McCashin.  Of Moore, but little is known.  In the summer of 1825, he built a cabin and
log stable on the east side of, and close to the line dividing the east and west halves of the 
southwest quarter of Section 9, in Township 12, afterward owned and occupied by Aaron LeGrange.  
Moore had entered the west half of that quarter, and publicly gave out that he owned the east 
half, but Adam Sash learning otherwise, entered that half, and the ownership of Moore's cabin 
and stable thus fell to him.

On Young's Creek, which flowed through the west eighty, he built a mill, but the site was inauspicious.  
At that point the creek run between low banks through a wide valley, and he found it impossible to 
construct a dam that would withstand the freshets.  His log mill-house was built over the creek bed 
on piles driven into the earth with a maul, and he put in machinery with which he could grind" from
ten to fifteen bushels of corn per day."  Driven to desperation by repeated washouts, he at last felled 
a large sycamore tree top on his dam, hoping in this way to hold it down; but finding it a vain effort, 
after a year or two he abandoned the enterprise, and soon after left the country and went, no one knew where.  
The foundation logs of his mill, after sixty-three years, are still to be seen, embedded in the Young's Creek 
mud, apparently as sound as the day they were placed there.

Moore left a bad reputation behind him.  He was charged with over-tolling the grists that went to his 
mill, and, not content with that, he caught a portion of the descending meal in his wide sleeves which 
he transferred to his own barrel, a trick not uncommon with rascally millers of his day.  It was laid to his 
charge also that he stole his neighbors hogs, and scrupled not to rob the Indians, who camped now and 
then in his vicinity.  Certain, it is, that he and his family were phenomenally untidy about their home.  
Under the high porch of his cabin, his little flock of sheep were penned every night, winter and summer, 
to keep them from the wolves, a precaution that his pioneer neighbors could have excused perhaps, but 
the ducks and geese that slept upon the porch and in the cabin itself, to keep them from their prowling 
enemies, the foxes, and minks, the neighbors could not excuse.  Moore could not build cabins and mill 
houses and roll logs without calling upon his neighbors for assistance, nor could they assist without 
dining at his table.  But the memory of the combined odors of the sheep-pen, of the goose and duck-sleeping 
apartment, and of the Moore cookery, remains to this day.  It is said that a boiled egg was the only article of 
food a man could eat at the Moore table without a qualm.  Nevertheless, Levi Moore left his name in a certain 
sense indelibly impressed upon the county.  Upon the little creek, that, taking its rise a mile north of Franklin 
and flowing thence southwesterly till it discharges into Young's Creek, not far from the site of his first cabin, 
he gave the name of "Indiana Creek," from the circumstance that the Indians frequently encamped upon it in 
the early days, and by that name it is still known.  In another stream, Moore's Creek, which unites with Young's 
Creek, near Hopewell, his name will be held in perpetual remembrance, for it carries his name.

Transcribed by Cheryl Zufall Parker