Nineveh Township - Two settlement centers, the Blue River and the White River, have 
been under review; let us pass to a third.  In the spring of 1821, Amos Durbin settled on 
the outskirts of the Blue River settlement, so far from its center that when the civil townships 
came to be organized, he was found to be in Nineveh Township, and he is therefore entitled 
to the distinction of being named as the first settler of Nineveh. The township derived its name 
from its principal creek, and it in turn from the following circumstance:  Richard Berry had a son, 
Nineveh, who, while hunting one winter's day, crossed the creek, which was originally known 
as the Leatherwood, and killed a deer.  With it on his back he undertook to recross the stream 
on a log, but loosing his footing he fell in, and came near being drowned.  His father ever after 
spoke of the stream as "Nineveh's Defeat," but the early settlers dropped the latter half of the 
name, calling it NINEVEH, and it is so known to this day.

But another man must be accredited with the honor of founding the first distinctive Nineveh 
neighborhood.  That man was Robert Worl, of whom but little is now known.  He was an Ohioan, 
who set out for the New Purchase the latter part of the summer of 1821.  With his family and a few 
personal effects he floated down the Ohio in a boat to some point on the Indiana shore, whence 
he made his way over the Indian trails to the Blue River Settlement, and thence through a pathless 
forest to Leatherwood Creek, or as it is now known, the Nineveh, where he arrived sometime in the 
month of September, and at once erected a pole cabin on the bank of the creek, a mile east of the 
present site of Williamsburg.  Worl and his family lived alone through the fall and winter, depending 
for the food mainly on the rifle.  The region round about was filled with game.  Wild turkeys, deer and 
bears were as plentiful as domestic stock in the same neighborhood is today.

Doubtless, the first fall and winter spent by the Worls in the Nineveh woods, they found exceedingly 
long and dismally lonesome; but the season of leaf and flower came at last, and with it three neighbors.  
On Friday, the 15th of March, Joah Woodruff and William Strain, came directly from Ohio, and Benjamin 
Crews, who two years before moved to the Blue River neighborhood, and settled over the line in Bartholomew 
County.  All three had families, and had been Worl'' neighbors in Ohio.  That was a busy spring on the Nineveh.  
Crews camped by the side of a log for eight weeks, from the middle of March to the middle of May, by which 
time he had nine cares cleared after the fashion of the times, which he planted in corn, and then he built a cabin.

During the year of 1822, eleven men, with their families, are known to have moved into the Township.  In addition 
to those already mentioned, were Adam Sash, Daniel and Henry Mussulman, and James Dunn from Kentucky, 
David Trout from Virginia, and John S. Miller from North Carolina.

The next year, James and William Gillaspy, William Spears, Curtis Pritchard, Louis Pritchard and Richard Perry, 
Kentuckians; and Jeremiah Dunham, an Ohioan, and Elijah DeHart, from North Carolina, moved in.  In 1824, Robert 
Moore, George Baily and Aaron Dunham, of Ohio, arrived, and Isaac Walker, Perry Baily, Joseph Thompson and 
Robert Forsyth, all from Kentucky.  In 1825, Daniel Pritchard, John Parkhurst, William Irving and Amos Mitchel, 
from Kentucky, and Jesse Young, from Ohio, moved in, and, in the year following, came Thomas Elliott, Prettyman 
Burton, William Keaton, Clark Tucker, Daniel Hutto, John Hall, John Elliot, all Kentuckians, and Thomas Griffith, 
Samuel Griffith, Richard Wheeler, James McKane, James and John Wylie, Ohioans.  In 1827, of those who came, 
John Kindle, Aaron Burgett and the Calvins - James, Luke, Thomas and Hiram - Milton McQuade, John Dodd, 
Robert Works and, as is supposed, George Henger and Jeremiah Hibbs, are all believed to have been from Ohio, 
and James Mullikin, David Forsyth and James Hughes, from Kentucky.  The next year Joseph Featherngill, Gabriel 
Givens, Mrs. Sarah Mathes and James White came, followed by Hume Sturgeon, in 1829, and by Walter Black, David 
Dunham, John Wilks and Aaron Burgett, in 1830.  Sturgeon was from Kentucky, Mrs. Mathes from Virginia, and the 
others from Ohio, save Black, whose native place is uncertain.

Transcribed by Cheryl Zufall Parker