White River Township - Let us turn now from the southeast to the northwest, from Blue River to 
White River.  Capt. White, an Indian, early in 1820, was found occupying a tract of land on the east 
bank of White River, since known as the Denny place, and being near the center of the northwest 
quarter of Section 32, in Township 14 north, Range 3 east.  Here was an extensive Indian clearing.  
Capt. White left the country the same spring, going with his people, the Delawares, to Arkansas, 
and in the "month of April or May," the same year one Daniel Morgan, a bachelor from western 
Pennsylvania moved to White's place and took possession.  He cultivated a small field of corn, 
but the squirrels devoured his crop before maturity, and he returned to the land of his nativity. 
In the fall of the same year, George Beeler, a resident of Morgan County, with his wife and sister-in-law, 
moved to Capt. White's place, and took possession; but Beeler died the same fall, and the White camp 
was once more vacated.

The following spring another man moved to the Capt. White place.  This was Abraham Sells, a 
Virginian, who came to Washington County, in Indiana, about the middle of February, 1821.  
"Leaving the female members of his family in that county, accompanied by his brother John Sells 
and four of his sons, and three of his own, Isaac, William and Franklin, he set out for the White River 
and reached Jacob Whetzel's about the 1st of March."  He had crossed over to the Indian trail, on 
the east bank of White River, up which he traveled, entering White River Township on Friday, the 
3d day of March, 1821, and at once he took possession of White's old wigwam.  Abraham Sell's 
came to stay.  He and his, brought seventy-five hogs, eleven cattle and eight horses, besides a 
goodly assortment of tools and provisions for the summer.  Their families were to come in the fall.  
The hogs and cattle were turned into the woods to shift for themselves, together with such of the 
horses as were not in immediate use.  A field of five or six acres was "brushed out" and enclosed 
with a temporary fence and planted in corn.  "West of the river was an old hackberry deadening, 
containing fifteen acres, requiring but little labor to bring it into cultivation.  In the year 1820, and 
in the years subsequent, a small green worm stripped the hackberry trees of all their leaves, killing 
them in a few weeks."*  That was also planted in corn.  The corn grown on the Capt. White place 
was broken into and destroyed by their own hogs.  After the crop was laid by, all except two of the 
company returned to Washington County, where John Sells, the bother of Abraham, and the latter's 
son, Isaac, died.  Late in the fall the others, with their families and household stuff, rejoined their 
White River brethren, and the permanency of their settlement was maintained.

Abraham Sells may justly be accounted as the first English speaking  white man to make a permanent 
home in White River Township.  Close upon his heels, came Thomas Lowe, a North Carolinian, with 
his family and his two sons-in-law, Permenter Mullenix and William Sanders, and their families.  Sells 
entered the township, as we have seen, on the third day of March, 1821, and Lowe came "between 
the 3d and 10," a very few days after.  The latter settled on a choice tract of land in Section 8, about 
two miles northeast of the Bluffs, and at once made preparation for raising a corn crop, the ensuing 
season.  About the middle of the same month of March, David Scott moved from near Bloomington, Ind., 
to White River township, and camped just below the mouth of Pleasant Run,** near Abraham Sells, and 
cleared and planted a field of corn.  His family he left behind, proposing to move them out the coming fall.  
Late in the summer, however, his horses escaped, and he became so much discouraged, that he sold out 
to Sells, and abandoned the county.

On Wednesday, the 10th day of May, following, John Doty and his family, from Hamilton County, Ohio, 
entered the township.  He had set out with his large family and all of his worldly possessions in search 
of a home "in the West," and entering the Whetzel trace at its eastern terminus, had traveled upon it till 
within three miles of its western end at the Bluffs.  Coming to a shapely, well-wooded hill, then, as now, 
a landmark, along the northern side of which the trace ran, he was so well pleased with the outlook that 
he unyoked his cattle and made a camp, and "went to living."  The next morning after their arrival, he and 
his three sons, Peter, Samuel, and George, began a clearing, and by hard work they managed to plant three 
or four acres in corn, which, when earing time came, fell a prey to the raccoons.  It is said these rodents 
came in droves, and stripped it of the last nubbin.

During the time the father and sons were making their clearing, the family occupied an open camp and 
were greatly annoyed by the rattle snakes.  One morning while at breakfast, they were horrified at the
sight of a monster which came crawling in at the open door of their camp.  It had been attracted, it is 
supposed, by the odor of frying venison.  More than thirty of these venomous reptiles were killed in 
and bout the hill the first season.  The next persons to move in, were Daniel Boaz and John Ritchey.  
These men with their families moved in one vehicle.  Boaz was a Virginian, by birth, and Ritchey a Kentuckian.  
They came to White River in the fall of 1821, and were the last of the arrivals for that year.  The close of 
the year saw eight families living in the White River settlement.  Twelve more, it is certainly known, came 
the year following, 1822.  These were Archibald Glenn, and John Murphy, from Kentucky; Nathan and 
Benjamin Culver, from East Tennessee; Nathanial St. John, from Ohio; Daniel Etter, Michael Brown, 
Andrew Brown, and one or two others, who long since left the county, from Virginia; and William and 
Samuel Blean, who were born in Ireland.  By the close of the second year, after the first settlement was 
made, not less than 100 people were living in the White River settlement.

*  Judge Franklin Harden.  John Tipton mentions a similar circumstance as being seen near the capital location.

** So named, it is said, because it was a pleasant running stream.

Transcribed by Cheryl Zufall Parker