The Man Warrick County, Indiana is Named After Was Originally From Kentucky
It's not uncommon for people to be curious about where the town they live in got its name. But, have you ever wondered why the county you live in is named what is?
Thankfully, the internet and Google exist which makes finding the answer almost instantaneous compared to the way we would have had to go about finding it 30 years ago. As you may or may not remember, depending on your age, if you wanted to find an answer to a question such as who your hometown is named after, it likely required a trip to the local library where you'd have to thumb your way through the Dewey Decimal System to find a book that may have the answer. If it didn't, you repeated the process until you hopefully found one that did. Compared to today, it sounds excruciatingly slow (because, in hindsight, it was).
Meet the Man Warrick County is Named After
I recently found out who Warrick County was named after purely by accident. I was actually researching an idea for another article I thought about writing, which ultimately led me to a dead end when I stumbled on the answer.
The residents of Newburgh, Boonville, Tennyson, and other towns in Warrick County can thank General William Henry Harrison who named the county after Captain Jacob Warrick. Here's what Geneology Trails says about Warrick's life and his role in the Battle of Tippecanoe, citing the book, The History of Gibson County, Gil R. Stormont 1914:
One of the distinguished and early settlers and Indian fighters was Capt. Jacob Warrick. He raised a company of rangers during the Indian troubles of 1811 and, at the request of Governor Harrison, joined the main army at Vincennes and marched against the Indians, and while gallantly leading a charge at the battle of Tippecanoe was killed, being buried on the field. General Harrison, in his official report of that battle, took occasion to commend in the highest terms the bravery of Captain Warrick. He was a Kentuckian by birth, and removed here with his family in 1807, settling in the northwest quarter of section 11, township 3, range 12, Gibson county about two miles west of Owensville. For that period he was regarded as a man of considerable wealth.
The History of Warrick County
Here's a fun fact: History shows the area we now know as Warrick County was settled by Native Americans as early as 1000 A.D. That's earlier than Angel Mounds. Here's a little more about how the county came to be.
[Source: Geology Trails]