One Township's Yesterdays Chapter XXXVII
SUNRISE OVER A NEW TOWNSHIP
"Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb Ascending, fires the horizon."
... William Cowper |
IT IS MORNING. The rising sun of the first day of March in the year 1840 welcomes a brand new unit into the union called Marshall
County. And that unit takes the name of Union Township.
Let us turn back briefly to an earlier beginning. Indiana was admitted to the Union of the States on April 19, 1816. It was one of
five States carved from a vast and fertile region of wilderness and prairie lying between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River that
had been earlier known as the Northwest Territory.
Union Township is numbered "one" on the records of the county. The petitioners for the organization of the township, March 1, 1840,
were:
VINCENT BROWNLEE
WILLIAM THOMPSON
JOHN A. SHIRLEY
LEWIS THOMPSON
JOHN DICKSON
WILLIAM HORNADAY |
JOHN M. MORRIS
JAMES HOUGHTON
ELIHU MORRIS
D. C. HULTS
THOMAS MCDONALD
JOHN MORRIS |
JOHN H. VOREIS
PLATT B. DICKSON
ELIAS DICKSON
JOHN MCDONALD
ELEAZER THOMPSON |
"The prayer of the petitioners," says DANIEL MC DONALD, "asked that the township might be called 'Union,' and
it was so ordered. The name was probably selected to perpetuate the name of “Union” county in southern Indiana, from which some of
the residents of that county came."
As now organized, Union Township is bounded on the west by Starke County, south by Fulton County, east by Green Township, and north
by West Township. Incidentally, the boundary on the west (Starke County line) is the Second Principal Meridian. Union Township is not
square . . . in its proportions, merely . . . but would be if it did not have the extra tier of sections across the north. It is six
sections wide, east and west, and seven long, north and south. Its area is six by seven miles.
The preliminary organization of the township took place May 1, 1838. It was taken from the west part of what was originally Green
Township. No change has been made in Union, as to its boundary lines, since its organization.
"A condition exists," writes Culver ex-editor A. B. HOLT, "in the southwest corner of Marshall County (and in the same corner of
Union Township) which is not duplicated anywhere else in the State. It is where the counties of Marshall, Starke, Pulaski and Fulton
join one another. By the proper arrangement of his limbs a man can be in four counties at the same time."
Union Township lies between the Yellow and Tippecanoe rivers, which form roughly, though not actually, the north and south boundaries.
The valleys of these rivers, because of the diverse features of the landscape, are not especially defined within the township confines.
There are, however, two distinct watersheds contributing to these streams, whose trend, so far as the township area is concerned, is
quite consistently westward -- if one may call the Yellow and Tippecanoe rivers consistent. The courses of these streams are erratic,
and are distinguished for their traits: twisting, winding, and bending as the traverse the country. Both are by nature as sinuous as
a serpent, though the dredging of the lower reaches of the Yellow River has rendered the course of that stream, west of Union Township,
practically straight for considerable stretches.
Lake Maxinkuckee is the predominating feature of the landscape. A pleasing variety of scenery is provided by rolling hills, lakes,
river valleys, the flat savannas (open plains), woods and thickets that characterize this region. East of the lake, the rounded
hills rise to a commanding height above the waters of that beautiful expanse of blue. The highest of these eminences might be
from the general run of Indiana hills by the name of knobs, so regular and steep are their slopes. These are especially noticeable
close to the old Maxinkuckee settlement.
Quite a wild region was this back in 1840; now tame and polished and civilized. It was an old sun, back then, close to a hundred
years ago, that rose over a new township. Our township is still very, very young. Compared with the age of the sun, the first
hundred years of township history are but as a fleeting
Today is