Mapping and Research for Huntington County, Indiana
Organized effective December 2, 1834, Huntington County was named for
Revolutionary Soldier, Samuel Huntington, a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, who succeeded John Jay as President of the Continental
Congress in 1779.
Huntington is the County Seat and General Tipton was the original
proprietor of the land.
The area is the site of the Forks of the Wabash which has been a
crossroads and stopping place for over 10,000. The first humans here
were nomad hunters on the trail of bison and mammoths, and Native
Americans camped her for millennia. The Miami Indians came to this area
in the late 1600s and by 1700 had occupied the entire Wabash Valley.
When the first French explorers came in the 1760s, all of Indiana and
the western half of Ohio were regarded as the home territory of the
Miami and their Algonquian cousins-- Delaware, Kickapoo, Shawnee,
Potawatami and others. The earliest Europeans were traders, the two
cultures coexisted more or less comfortably for about a century.
Huntington is also the site of the Chiefs' House built by Chief Jean
Baptiste Richardville about 1834. He was Civil Chief of the Miami from
1816 to 1841. A skilled negotiator, he won major concessions from the
U.S. government in treaty negotiations. His many business interests
included control of the Long Portage (he charged tolls for the use of
the portage), and he was said to have been the wealthiest Indian in
North America at his death. His son-in-law, Francis Lafontaine,
succeeded him and used the Chiefs' House as his main residence.
LaFontaine died in 1847. *
The Wabash & Erie Canal cut through Huntington County in 1834 and was a
major economic factor in European settlement and early development.
*source--Brochure produced in cooperation with the Tourism Development
Division, Indiana Department of Commerce
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