William Henry Harrison was an American military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States. Harrison died just 31 days after his inauguration as president in 1841, making his presidency the shortest in U.S. history. He was also the first U.S. president to die in office, causing a brief constitutional crisis since presidential succession was not then fully defined in the United States Constitution. Harrison was the last president born as a British subject in the Thirteen Colonies and was the paternal grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States.
The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought on November 7, 1811, in Battle Ground, Indiana, between American forces led by then Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory and tribal forces associated with Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, leaders of a confederacy of various tribes who opposed European-American settlement of the American frontier. As tensions and violence increased, Governor Harrison marched with an army of about 1,000 men to attack the confederacy's headquarters at Prophetstown, near the confluence of the Tippecanoe River and the Wabash River.
Sullivan County is a county in the U.S. state of Indiana, and determined by the US Census Bureau to include the mean center of U.S. population in 1940. As of 2020, the population was 20,758. The county seat is Sullivan.
Gibson County is a county in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Indiana. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 33,011. The county seat is Princeton.
Daviess County is a county in the U.S. state of Indiana. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 33,381. The county seat is Washington. About 15% of the county's population is Amish of Swiss origin, as of 2017.
Battle Ground is a town in Tippecanoe Township, Tippecanoe County in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 1,334 at the 2010 census. It is near the site of the Battle of Tippecanoe.
The Indiana Territory, officially the Territory of Indiana, was created by an organic act that President John Adams signed into law on May 7, 1800, to form an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1800, to December 11, 1816, when the remaining southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Indiana. The territory originally contained approximately 259,824 square miles (672,940 km2) of land, but its size was decreased when it was subdivided to create the Michigan Territory (1805) and the Illinois Territory (1809). The Indiana Territory was the first new territory created from lands of the Northwest Territory, which had been organized under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The territorial capital was the settlement around the old French fort of Vincennes on the Wabash River, until transferred to Corydon near the Ohio River in 1813.
Jonathan Jennings was the first governor of the State of Indiana and a nine-term congressman from Indiana. Born in either Hunterdon County, New Jersey, or Rockbridge County, Virginia, he studied law before migrating to the Indiana Territory in 1806. Jennings initially intended to practice law, but took jobs as an assistant at the federal land office at Vincennes and assistant to the clerk of the territorial legislature to support himself and pursued interests in land speculation and politics. Jennings became involved in a dispute with the territorial governor, William Henry Harrison, that soon led him to enter politics and set the tone for his early political career. In 1808 Jennings moved to the eastern part of the Indiana Territory and settled near Charlestown, in Clark County. He was elected as the Indiana Territory's delegate to the U.S. Congress by dividing the pro-Harrison supporters and running as an anti-Harrison candidate. By 1812 he was the leader of the anti-slavery and pro-statehood faction of the territorial government. Jennings and his political allies took control of the territorial assembly and dominated governmental affairs after the resignation of Governor Harrison in 1812. As a congressional delegate Jennings aided passage of the Enabling Act in 1816, which authorized the organization of Indiana's state government and state constitution. He was elected president of the Indiana constitutional convention, held in Corydon in June 1816, where he helped draft the state's first constitution. Jennings supported the effort to ban slavery in the state and favored a strong legislative branch of government.
Fort Harrison was a War of 1812 era stockade constructed in Oct. 1811 on high ground overlooking the Wabash River on a portion of what is today the modern city of Terre Haute, Indiana, by forces under command of Gen. William Henry Harrison. It was a staging point for Harrison to encamp his forces just prior to the Battle of Tippecanoe a month later. The fort was the site of a famous battle in the War of 1812, the siege of Fort Harrison in Sept. 1812 that was the first significant victory for the U.S. in the war. The fort was abandoned in 1818 as the frontier moved westward.
Sanford Wesley Ransdell was an early American pioneer and soldier in the Battle of Tippecanoe. Ransdell was born in Orange County, Virginia, on September 11, 1781. He was a descendant of Edward Ransdell, a signer of the historic Leedstown Resolutions written up in defiance of the Stamp Act.
John Tipton was from Tennessee and became a farmer in Indiana; an officer in the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe, and veteran officer of the War of 1812, in which he reached the rank of Brigadier General; and politician. He was elected to the Indiana General Assembly in 1819, and in 1831 as US Senator from the state of Indiana, serving until 1838. He was appointed as US Indian Agent and was selected to lead the militia in removing Menominee's band of Potawatomie in 1838; they were relocated to Kansas, Indian Territory.
Major Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, a Virginia-born lawyer, received a mortal wound while commanding the Dragoons of the Kentucky Militia at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Five years earlier, Daveiss had tried to warn President Thomas Jefferson about Aaron Burr's plans to provoke rebellion in Spanish-held territories southwest of his Kentucky district. Several places in the United States are named for Daveiss, but though he spelled his name "Daveiss", these places all have the spelling "Daviess".
Winamac was the name of a number of Potawatomi leaders and warriors beginning in the late 17th century. The name derives from a man named Wilamet, a Native American from an eastern tribe who in 1681 was appointed to serve as a liaison between New France and the natives of the Lake Michigan region. Wilamet was adopted by the Potawatomis, and his name, which meant "Catfish" in his native Eastern Algonquian language, was soon transformed into "Winamac", which means the same thing in the Potawatomi language. The Potawatomi version of the name has been spelled in a variety of ways, including Winnemac, Winamek, and Winnemeg.
Avoca Township is located in Livingston County, Illinois. As of the 2010 census, its population was 405 and it contained 149 housing units.
Joseph Bartholomew was a general in the Indiana Militia and served in numerous military conflicts. He also worked as a farmer, hunter, trapper, self-taught surveyor, and politician. Bartholomew County, Indiana and the Bartholomew Trail were named after him.
During the War of 1812, the Indiana Territory was the scene of numerous engagements which occurred as part of the conflict's western theater. Prior to the war's outbreak in 1812, settlers from the United States had been gradually colonizing the region, which led to increased tensions with local Native Americans and the outbreak of Tecumseh's War. In 1811, Tecumseh's confederacy, formed in response to encroachment by white American settlers, was defeated by U.S. forces at the Battle of Tippecanoe. After the conflict broke out, most Native Americans in the region joined forces with the British Empire and attacked American forces and settlers in concert with their British allies.
During the War of 1812, Kentucky supplied numerous troops and supplies to the war effort. Because Kentucky did not have to commit manpower to defending fortifications, most Kentucky troops campaigned actively against the enemy. This led to Kentucky seeing more battle casualties than all other states combined.
Benjamin Parke was an American lawyer, politician, militia officer, businessman, treaty negotiator in the Indiana Territory who also served as a United States federal judge in Indiana after it attained statehood in 1816. Parke was the Indiana Territory's attorney general (1804–1808); a representative to the territory's first general assembly (1805); its first territorial delegate to the United States House of Representatives (1805–1808); one of the five Knox County delegates to the Indiana constitutional convention of 1816; and a territorial court judge (1808–1816). After Indiana attained statehood, Parke served as the first United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Indiana (1817–1835).
White caps were groups involved in the whitecapping movement who were operating in southern Indiana in the late 19th century. They engaged in vigilante justice and lynchings, with modern viewpoints describing their actions as domestic terrorism. They became common in the state following the American Civil War and lasted until the turn of the 20th century. White caps were especially active in Crawford and neighboring counties in the late 1880s. Several members of the Reno Gang were lynched in 1868, causing an international incident. Some of the members had been extradited to the United States from Canada and were supposed to be under federal protection. Lynchings continued against other criminals, but when two possibly innocent men were killed in Corydon in 1889, Indiana responded by cracking down on the white cap vigilante groups, beginning in the administration of Isaac P. Gray.
The Battle of Wild Cat Creek was the result of a November 1812 punitive expedition against Native American villages during the War of 1812. It has been nicknamed "Spur's Defeat", which is thought to refer to the spurs used by the soldiers to drive their horses away from the battle as quickly as possible. The campaign is sometimes referred to as the Second Battle of Tippecanoe.
