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revised 9-16-2003

INDIANA

    French explorers first came into the Indiana region about 1679.  At this point, the entire territory was pretty much a wilderness, inhabited by a few Indians.  During the 1700s, the only white men in the region were the fur traders.

    The first counties to be settled were in the extreme southern end.  Settlers in those areas came from Virginia, Kentucky and the Carolina.  A group of Swiss emigrants established themselves in the southeastern part of the area.     The Wabash and the Ohio river sections drew many of the first settlers.  The area saw an influx of Germans and Irish around 1830.  About twenty years the New Englanders began migrating into the northern counties.  The central part of what is now Indiana was the last to be settled.  Quakers who wanted no part of slavery left Tennessee and the Carolinas and established themselves in Wayne and Randolph counties along the Ohio border about halfway north and south in Indiana.

    The Calumet section South Chicago, which lies in the northwest part of the state, was settled by many Central Europeans, who came there to man the factories.  Indiana became a territory in 1800 and finally achieved statehood as our nineteenth state on 11 December 1816.

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