A History of Marion Township

    In presenting a general history of any given area, it is well to start at the very beginning and carry right on down to the present time. This is being done to some extent in this chronicle of Marion Township, Boone County, Indiana.
The reader is to bear in mind that the prehistoric and some of the historic data presented here, precedes, of course, Marion Township's actual organization as a unit of civil government Yet it covers a tiny portion of the good earth the entire 45 square miles embracing 28, 800 acres--in the six miles wide by seven and a half miles deep bit of global surface now constituting the township in the northeast corner of Boone County.
    Marion Township once, and until sometime in the late 1800’s, encompassed 46 square miles of territory. The now missing square mile is Section 13 that today forms the northeast corner of Center Township.
    We will skip naming the several geological periods of time and pass up discussion of the various ages, pausing briefly at the ice age to note that our area was ironed flat and smooth by two great glaciers. The waters of the last of the two, which melted away some 25, 000 years ago. began as small trickles to etch out the valleys and to cur the channels of our creeks and steams. Marion’s terrain is regarded as being level tableland between the Wabash and the White river drainage systems, the latter getting the lion's share by way of the headwaters of Big Eagle Creek, flowing south.
    As soon as the ancient ice sheets were gone, old Mother Nature with lavish hand began covering the barren earth with a carpet of green, and birds and animals and fishes and reptiles moved into the grasslands and the forests. Around 700 A. D., the Adena Indians came into eastern central Indiana, to build a few mounds and then mysteriously disappear. Prehistoric Indians such as the Adenas are not known to have lived in our area but undoubtedly they roamed in it as hunters and fishermen.
    Our particular part of the country had a very sparse historic Indian population from the time of the coming of the French explorers in the late 1600’s until the late 1700’s. Many tribes were displaced in the Ohio area by the treaty at Fort Greenville, in 1795, and began moving into Indiana. Delawares lived to the east of us at the village of Strawtown, on the south bank of the White River, and the Eel Rivers of the Miami Indian Confederacy, lived west of us at Ka -wi -a ki- -un -gi, later to become Thorntown. Indians of the two villages visited back and forth by way of the Strawtown Trail, now Indiana Highway 47, and most certainly found the hunting good in the 34 miles of territory lying between their towns.
    By reason of her explorations beginning in 1669, France claimed the great wilderness west of the Allegheny Mountains which took in the Ohio and much of the Mississippi River valleys Defeated in the French and Indian War, France turned the region over to Great Britain in 1763. The United States took -possession in 1783, and out of this primeval domain, created the Northwest Territory in 1787
    On July 4, 1800, the Northwest Territory was divided into two territories, Ohio and Indiana, the latter taking in what are now the states of Indiana, Illinois Michigan, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota. Ohio territory became a state, March 1, 1803. Indiana territory was whittled down in 1805 when Michigan territory was formed, and further reduced in 1809 when Illinois territory came into being. At the latter date, Indiana assumed the size and shape it was when it became the 19th state of the Union on December 11, 1816.
A County Is Born

    Boone County was officially born on April 1, 1830, with Jamestown selected in the following June as the county seat, Jamestown was most unsatisfactory as the seat of government, especially to settlers living in the northeast quadrant of the county. For some, it was a 60 mile round trip to Jamestown.
    Accordingly, Lebanon, being within two miles of the geographical center of the county as specified by the Indiana General Assembly, became the new county capital on May 1,1832.
The earliest settlement of the Boone County area was made in the southeast corner, in Eagle and Union townships. David McCurdy, of Pike township. Marion County. on September 13, 1822, made the first entry of land in what was to become Boone County, with Ezekial Rice, of Boone County, Kentucky making the second entry on December 5. in the same year. Neither man took up residence on his entered land. The third entry was made by Patrick H. Sullivan on February 4, 1823, on 80 acres just south of present day Zionville. Sullivan, with his family, was the first to permanently settle in the Boone County area. By November 30, 1830 in the year of its founding, Boone County showed a population of 622 persons in the U.S. decennial census taken by Austin Davenport, the county's first sheriff.
    As of the year 1830, in so far as is known, there was not a single permanent settler living in Marion Township. There may have been a squatter or two, but it was not until the following year. 1831, that settlement of the township began. There was but one entry of land made in Marion in 1830. when George Boxley got 80 acres in Section 19, up near the northwest corner of the township. There is no evidence that Boxtey ever lived on the land acquired; he may have been a resident in the area of the present day town of Boxley. in Hamilton County, and bought the ground as a speculative venture.
    In 1831, seven individuals, including Zachariah Turpin, Robert Welirnan, Joseph Campbell, Jacob Boyle, Milton Gallaher, Homer Brooks, and Henry
Todd, bought Marion Township land from the U. S. Government. Presumably. most of them, if not all, settled on the acreage they obtained. Only four persons made land entries in 1832, followed by seventeen in 1833. Among those entering land in those two years were John Burns, George Walker, Isaac Stite, Aaron Wilkinson, Edward Jackson, Thomas Jackson, Jacob Johns, John Beset, Caleb Richardson, John Hollenback, Jacob Parr, George W. Todd, Thomas M. Turpin and John Doolin. In 1834, settlers began pouring into the township with 74 entries in that year. but dropping to 47 in 1835. The big surge came in 1836 when 171 entries were made. Only 22 tracts were taken up in 1837, none in 1838, and the last and final entry of U. S. land was made by John Dernott, in 1839. There were remaining at that time, however, ten 40 acre tracts of swamp-land which the Federal Government turned over to the state of Indiana in 1860. These tracts were sold in 1858 and 1854. The old pioneers found much of the township wet and swampy, a situation they promptly corrected by tile and open ditching. The 1876 map of Indiana notes a “Half Mile Prairie” just north of Slabtown.
    For the record, land in Section 13, Twp. 19N, R1E once in Marion but now in Center Township, was entered in the years 1836 through 1839 by Charles F, Powell, Daniel P. Campbell, Samuel Evans, James Martin and Aaron Evans.
    All the land in  Marion Township was U.S. owned from 1818 until sold in varying sized tracts to the settlers. It central and northern Indiana the government gained from the Indians in a treaty made at St. Mary's, Ohio, in October, 1818.
Early Settlers

    Other early settlers in the township were Moody Gillam, John Parr, Sr., and his son, John, William Lane, Lewis Harris, John McCoy, John Runno, the Stephenson brothers John. Robert, and William, Jesse Baker, Samuel Evans, Joseph Kimble, Robert McNulty, John Wright, John Beard, John King, the Moores, Samuel, John, and James. Smith Caster, Robert Bell, Richard Cornell, and Daniel Myers.
    Since the records of the commissioner's court were destroyed when the temporary quarters of recorder, auditor, and treasurer burned in the fire of October 12, 1856, which leveled the two story frame building on the west side of the square housing the three county offices, no details are known concerning the organization of Boone County Townships, Marion Township in particular.
    Presumably, eleven townships were outlined and named shortly after the founding of the county, perhaps within the year. The twelfth township. Worth, was not created until 1851 when it was formed by taking sections from Center, Perry, Eagle. and Union.
    Organization of township government in all units was not effected immediately, some possibly not completed until in 1835 or 1836. Marion Township, named, it is believed, in honor of the famous Revolutionary War General, Francis Marion, “the Swamp Pox,” may have begun organization in 1835, completing the process, definitely, in 1836.
    Whatever civil affairs in Marion needing attention in 1834 were administered by Squire Abner Sanborn, of Georgetown, or Northfield, as it was later named. Sanborn was elected a justice of the peace for Union and Marion Townships in June, 1834, succeeding John M. Bay, who had been elected in early 1832, but who had resigned. Isaac Stite, believed to have been a resident of Marion Township, was commissioned a justice of the peace by Governor Noah Noble on April 15. 1835. If the conjecture as to Srite's residency is true, then Marion Townships civil government may have had some organization in 1835. The election return concerning Srite is missing from the files in the Archives Division of the Indiana State Library. The name of his township, and whether he served his full seven-year-term, or resigned, or died, is not known.

    We are reasonably sure that Marion Township's government went into full operation in 1836, because it is documented that in an election held on April 4, 1836, John F. Johnson and Robert Stephenson were elected justices of the peace, ‘in and for said township.” Stephenson’s brother, John, is said to have been named constable at that time. Marion Township's justices of the peace formed the judicial division of the unit's civil government. Prior to 1859, the administrative branch governing the township was composed of a board of three trustees, a township clerk, and a township treasurer, all elected annually.
    Marion Township's government is now vested in a trustee and three members of an advisory board, all elected to four year terms. There was a time in years past when the township had a road supervisor and an assessor, but these offices have long since been abolished. Although entitled to one, the township has not had a justice of the peace for many years, which may be regarded as highly complimentary to the good behavior of its citizens.
    Once, certainly more so than now, the township trustee was an important and rather powerful official. The township funds were in his care, he was in charge of the schools, he looked after the poor and indigent, and bossed the road supervisor. Today, his duties mainly consist of administering poor relief, seeing to the upkeep of abandoned cemeteries in which soldiers are buried, and assessing real estate and improvements, business inventories, and personal property exclusive of household goods and automobiles.
    It may be of interest to here note that the trustee's budget for the operation of Marion's civil government for the year 1976 was $4, 655. 00. Last year the amount spent for poor relief was a mere $289. 75, which speaks well for the economy and well being of the township.
    With no roads and no schools now under his jurisdiction, it may be only a matter of time until the trustees’ office is done away with, and its assessing and poor relief duties taken over by the county assessor and the county welfare department. With population and assessed valuation above certain specified figures, Center and Eagle Townships are the only two of Boone County's twelve now having elected assessors.
    One of the prime concerns of the pioneer settlers of Marion township was the schooling of their children. Their first move in this direction was a school taught, it is said, in a log cabin near the home of John Parr, in 1833. A log schoolhouse was built near Big Spring in 1836, and this one likely was the forerunner of the Parr School, District #1, about one mile north of Big Spring.
    Within the next year or so, a second log schoolhouse was put up on the farm of John Wright. This one became, it is believed, the Wright School, District #2, about one-half mile east of Slabtown. In the 1870’s. there were twelve frame schoolhouses in the township, all for the elementary grades no high school and probably all were one room structures. There were thirteen schools in Marion in 1885 with 899 pupils enrolled.
    In the brief history of Marion township appearing in the Kingman Brothers Atlas of Boone County. published in 1878, this statement is made: “Free education is given in twelve schoolhouses, at various points in the township, and the total valuation of school property is over $3, 000. 00.
    In 1934, there were yet six grade schools in the township with the youngsters above the elementary level going to the high schools in Sheridan, Kirklin and Lebanon. The six remaining in 1934 consisted of four one -room schools -Parr. Myers, Baker’s Corner, and Wright. a two -room structure at Terhune, and a three -room building at Center.
    Today. the township has only one elementary school, Marion - Adams, grades one through six, on Road 47, four miles east of Elizaville. and a like distance west of Sheridan. As of May 1, 1976, there were 128 pupils enrolled in Marion - Adams elementary, while 140 junior and senior students were attending the Marion - Adams high school in Sheridan, The Marion - Adams elementary school was built and opened in 1952 as the Marion township consolidated school, Marion township. Boone County, and Adams township, Hamilton County, merged in 1962 to form the Marion - Adams Consolidated School District.
    Marion’s first citizens were also concerned with ministering to their spiritual needs. For the first few years, religious meetings were held in the several homes, the first being a Methodist Episcopal service in Caleb Richardson’s log cabin. In 1839, the Methodists built and dedicated a building expressly for church purposes. according to the Ringman Atlas, previously referred to, Where this church was located is not known
    The old atlas noted that in 1878, there were four Methodist Episcopal, one Friends church, and one Methodist Protestant church in Marion township. Omitted was mention of the Antioch Primitive Baptist church, which had been founded in 1870. There is indication that around the turn of the century there were six churches, a United Brethren, two Methodist Protestant, a Primitive Baptist, a Methodist Episcopal, and a Christian. serving the township's religious community.

As of July 1, 1916, there were only four churches in the township. The United Methodist at Terhune, formerly an Evangelical United Brethren until the merger with the Methodist in 1968, has a membership of around 80. Christian Liberty Congregational Church at the intersection of Roads 421 and 47 has 86 members. Sedwick Chapel. a United Methodist on Road 47, opposite the Marion-Adams school, lists 69 on its roll. Antioch Primitive Baptist with 27 members, is located two miles due north of Big Springs. A fifth church, a Methodist Episcopal at Slabtown, or
Waugh. disbanded in 1968. Some residents in the southeastern corner of the township attend, or are members of, the Community Church, formerly a Methodist church, at Big Springs, the church being just over the line in Union township.
    Back to some ancient church data for a moment. “The People's Guide.’ a Boone County directory published in 1874, named three churches in Marion township, apparently omitting others also then existing, the three being Poplar Grove and Salem, both Methodist Episcopal, and Western Review Friends. It is fairly certain that the Friends church was just west of the Boone - Hamilton county line, and a mile north of Road 47.
    Salem may have been the Salem Chapel Methodist Church, said to have been built at Kimberlin in 1819, but very definitely shown on the map of 1878, a year previous. The church at Kimberlin is said to have removed to Terhune around 1889.
    In recent times and until 1968, the church now at Terhune was an Evangelical United Brethren, so it and an M. B. church may both have been at Terhune with the latter phased out years ago. Or the M. B. Church moved to Terhune may have changed over to the United Brethren. Considerable research needs to be done to straighten out the history of these particular churches.  Where the Poplar Grove church was located is not known at present.

First the Land

    With its rich and fertile soil making it a highly productive farming area, Marion township has always resisted urbanization. In its entire history it has harbored only six hamlets or villages, with a seventh being shared wit Union Township.
    Of these little settlements, the first to appear on the map was Northern Depot, It was situated on the Pumpkin­vine road at a T-road junction, about two miles northeast of Elizaville, and three quarters of a mile west of the old Michigan Road, now Road 421.
    It would be stretching the truth to call Northern Depot a settlement or hamlet because it consisted of only one house, the building in which the founder of the place lived and operated his general store. Abner Smith started his business in one large room of his home in early 1855. On April 19th, of that year. the place was commissioned a U. S. Post Office with Smith as postmaster. During the Civil War, a number of Marion township boys serving in the Union Army gave Northern Depot as their home post office address.
    In the two decades of its rather fleeting existence, Northern Depot saw its business establishment change hands several times, and its post office twice discontinued and twice reestablished, to be closed forever on December 7, 1875. Presumably, the store went out of business in the same year, and the place was not named on the 1878 map. Only farm land now marks the site of Northern Depot.
    Storekeeper Smith, in 1851, advertised in the Boone County Pioneer, a weekly newspaper published at Lebanon, that he sold dry goods, notions, groceries, hardware, queensware, paints, oils, dye-stuffs, all kinds of medicine, and everything else, and more too, that is usually kept in a county store.
    With each place marked at a crossroads intersection on the 1865 map as having a grist mill and a saw mill, both steam powered the township's next two settlements that could be termed villages Slabtown, later renamed Waugh, and Kimberlin or Kimberlain came into being in the middle 1860’s. The old map dots five old houses at Slabtown, and only one at Kimberlin.
    Slabtown, on the Michigan road, eight and a half miles east of Lebanon and three miles north of Road 32, never grew to much prominence as an urban center. In its early days, it had the two mills, a brickyard. a general store, a blacksmith shop, the Lane’s Chapel Methodist Episcopal church, and half a dozen or so houses. An 1876 Indiana map notes the village as “Slabtown P. 0.” A post office was established there on March 21, 1870, wit Thomas Chew as postmaster. He was succeeded by George F. Duchenine, Jr.  on January 11, 1871. The office was discontinued on October 12, 1871, to be reestablished as Waugh, twenty years later.
    Government records do show tat Slabtown got a post office on July 3, 1891, under the name of Waugh. so named in honor of Congressman Daniel W. Waugh. who served Indiana's Ninth District two terms. 1891-1896. Storekeeper Addison M. Padgert was the first postmaster of the office, which was discontinued on December 14, 1900.
    Slabtown got its unusual name in its infancy when a neighborhood drunk tripped and fell one dark night over a slab in the saw mill yard. As he got up, he was heard by the village wit to loudly exclaim, “Damn their old slab— town anyhow!” The aforesaid wit gleefully broadcast what he heard, far and wide. The name caught on and is yet used interchangeably with Waugh in reference to the community.
    A 1907 Boone County business directory lists a grocery store on ‘Main street” in Waugh, and gives 25 as the estimated population. Its last general store closed April 13, 1966, and its church gave up the ghost on Sunday, May 26, 1968. Some four or five homes are still there, and its population is said to be around 18 or 20 persons. Kimberlain, as it was on the map, or Kimberlin, its post office name, was the most ephemeral of the Marion township villages. It had its origin in or around 1865 on land owned by Isaac Kimble, and had as its nucleus the two mills and one house.
    In its heyday, Kimberlin is said to have had a school, a church, two blacksmith tops, a barber shop, a general store and post office, a saloon, a shingle and stave factory, a doctor's office, and about 26 houses. Throughout most of its life, Kimberlin went by its nickname, Possum Trot. The east and west mad through the village is still called the Possum Trot road.
    James H. and Joseph Kimble also owned or tenanted farms in the immediate vicinity of Kimberlin. In all likelihood, the town's name was derived from the Kimble family name, It may at first have been called Kimbleland, and soon, through mispronunciation or misspelling, or both, became mapped as Kimberlain, and recorded as Kimberlin when given a post office.

    Kimberlin got its post office on April 17, 1879, with William A. Simms as postmaster. The post office was discontinued on July 2, 1383, and subsequently moved to newly founded Terhune, some tree quarters of a mile to the north.
    In and around the same year it lost the post office, Kimberlin saw its several small businesses, its blacksmith shops and a little industry or two, its physician. Dr. J. C. Purdy, and some of its residents flocking to Terhune to resettle and reestablish themselves in that burgeoning burg. From that time on, the village declined rapidly, and the makers of the 1904 map of Marion township omitted showing it.
    As of now, there are two abandoned and decaying one story frame houses east of the crossroads at Kimberlin or Possmm Trot. The only other thing marking the site is a gnarled, forlorn and lonesome old pine tree, standing as a living “in memoriam.”

    Terhune came into existence in 1882, the same year the Chicago. Indianapolis and Louisville railroad angled 4. 68 miles of its track across northeastern Marion township. The C., L. & L. was first called the Air Line, and later and in more recent years, the Monon.
    That Terhune was founded in 1332 is well documented in the archives on file in the Boone county recorder’s office. Recorded in the county plat book under date of June 17, 1882, is the statement or Charles F. S. Neal, Boone County surveyor, 1880-1882, chat he surveyed the tract on 16 and 3/4 acres owned by David Harrison, on TuneS. 1882, mapping it into town blocks and lots.
    Neal, himself, named the town in honor of his good friend, Thomas J. Terhume, of Lebanon, judge of the Boone circuit court, 1873-1888  Years, afterward, Neal told that he laid out the town and gave it its name in March, 1881. Perhaps he meant that he planned it then, but since it was not actually platted as town lots until  in June. 1882, it surely did not exist until after the latter date.
    Moved from Kimberlin on July 2, 1333, the post office functioned at Terhune until its final  discontinuance on December 15, 1911. Since that time , the community has received its mail on a rural routes out of the Sheridan post office. As of now, post office canons in Marion township are served by rural routes cut of Sheridan. Lebanon, and Whitestown. A Kirklin route serves a few householders.
    Boone County’s “Pocket Business Directory, published in 1907, set Terhune’s population at 223, but did not state the number of residences. At that time, the town boasted of having two general stores, a grocery store, a notary public, two blacksmith shops, a grain elevator, and a doctor. It is reported that it once had a saloon as well. The medical man was Dr. J. C. Purdy. who had moved from Kimberlin in the great exodus of 1883. He had either died or retired from practice by 1912, as no doctor was listed at Terhune in a directory published in that year. He may have been Terhuno’s last physician. T.W.Akard was the Terhune postmaster in 1907 and 1912, and may have held that post when the office was discontinued in 1917.
    For over fifty years. the Terhune community was served by the Terhune Cooperative Telephone Co., and its Terhune-based switchboard. The company. organized and beginning operation around 1901 or 1902, was bought by Indiana Bell on June 1, 1955, which converted its new property to the dial system. No longer identified by name, the Terhune community is now furnished telephone service by exchanges In neighboring towns.
    Today, Terhune consists of some 35 houses, mostiy nestled between the Frankfort-Noblesville road (Indiana highway 38) and the Monon railroad, with around a hundred given as the estimated population. It has a general store, a grain elevator, and a United Methodist church, formerly an Evangelical United Brethren church, as a carryover from its days as a busy business and trading center of an extensive surrounding agricultural area. Two freights pass trough the town daily over the Monon, but passenger train service ceased some fourteen years ago.
    On the second floor of the general store building Is the lodge hall of the Pride of Boone, No. 182, Improved Order of Odd Fellows, installed on January 28, 1902, and its sister organization, Verne Rebekahs, No. 631. Both are yet active, the former with a membership of 85, and the latter with 56 on its roster.
    The Odd Fellows lodge, it is believed, is the only fraternal organization ever to exist in Marion township. However, back in the 1870’s, and perhaps for a decade or two thereafter, the township was the home of three units - Stephenson Grange, Kimberlin Grange, and Marion Grange - of the still existent National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry. This body, a secret society, as founded in 1861 to advance the social, economic and political interests of the nation’s farmers.
    Dot was a tiny community located about a mile south and two miles east of Elizaville, and a short mile west of the Michigan Road. It was never dignified by being named on a county or township map, although George F. Cram pinpointed it on his map of Indiana drawn in 1901. As an added indignity, it was more often than not alluded to by one of its two ridiculous nicknames, Buzzard’s Roost and Swampdoodle. It flourished from sometime in the 1880’s until around 1917.
    There were three homes in the vicinity, a blacksmith shop, and Anderson (Jack) Smiley was running a general store there in 1892, because on July 14, of that year, he got a post office for Dot with himself as postmaster.
    Discontinuance of the post office was made September 30, 1901, and Dot gradually faded into oblivion with no trace today marking its place. The District # 4 one-room school at Dot, and bearing that name, functioned until in 1928 when it was merged with the three room District # 5 school at Center.
    Center, earlier called Little Chicago, sprung up some time in the late 1800's at the crossroads two miles east of Dot and one mile east of the Michigan road. The earliest mention of the hamlet was noted in an 1889 issue of a Lebanon weekly newspaper in an item which briefly referred to Little Chicago.
    In its boom days, Little Chicago displayed two general stores, a blacksmith shop, half a dozen residences, and a district school. When the name was changed to Center is not known but may have occurred shortly after the last store went out of business in 1915. Center School was abandoned in 1952 with the opening of the new Marion township consolidated grade school, one mile north on State Road 47, opposite Sedwick Chapel.
    As of January 1, 1907, according to the old directory, there were an estimated 40 persons living in Little Chicago or Center. When visited recently, Center consisted of a one family frame house, and the old frame three room schoolhouse which had been remodeled into a one  family apartment type dwelling. Center may have derived its name as such because it is fairly in the middle of the township, needing to be moved north three- quarters mile to be exactly in Marion’s geographical center.
    Big Spring. the name later pluralized was once a thriving crossroads hamlet on the Union township line, a mile west of the Boone Hamilton county line and two miles north of Indiana Road 32. It got Its name from a copious spring of cold, crystal clear water which bubbled out of the earth just south of the village. 

    Big Spring began its initial growth within the first few years following the Civil War. The 1885 map shows a church on the southeast corner of the road intersection, but no other     indication of a settlement there. The four corners were then owned by G. B. Richardson, J. and G. Johns. J. P. Johns, and J. Pittman. a corner to each owner named.
    Kingman’s 1876 Atlas mapped at Big Spring in that year, 15 houses, a steam saw and grist mill, a blacksmith shop, a wagon shop, the Methodist Church, and Dr. Baker’s office, but omitted showing a general store which it surely had at that time. The 1907 directory gave the estimated population at 80, and listed a general store, a blacksmith shop, and the office of Dr. J. A. McGhee, physician and surgeon.
    Big Spring got a post office on December 4, 1883, with William D. Johns as postmaster. The office was closed November 15, 1900. In 1920, C. C. Barker for a time operated a 25 barrel daily capacity hour mill at Big Springs. Just to the north is a little graveyard, variously called the Richardson or Big Springs cemetery.
    Telephone service for the community began in 1901 with the Big Spring Cooperative Telephone Company being incorporated on January 22, of that year. The switchboard was in Big Springs until the property was bought in February, 1967, and converted to the dial system by the Hendricks Telephone Company, of Roachdale, the present owner.
    As of December 1, 1969, there were 14 residences housing 48 people in Big Springs, but no businesses or industries of any kind. Its church is now the Big Springs Community Church with no denominational affiliation.

    Most, but not quite all, of Marion township is furnished electricity by the lines owned by the Boone County Rural Electric Membership Corporation, with offices and
supply depot at Lebanon. Some current is provided in the area by the Public Service Company of Indiana.
    Boone was the first county in the nation to acquire rural electric service under the Rural Electrification Administration, an agency of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, created by executive order in May, 1935, with statutory provision for the agency made in the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.
    Service to the farmers and county residents began on May 21, 1936, when the first of the R. E.M. C. lines was energized. Construction of lines throughout all twelve townships, including Marion, followed at a rapid pace, and before many months, electrical energy was available throughout the county.
    Politically, Marion township in the past was a Republican stronghold, and although some say it is now somewhat divided, the last election towed it to still have strong G. 0. P. leanings. In the 1914 election, Republicans in precincts one and two, cast, respectively, 160 and 151 votes, a total of 311. for secretary of state, with the Democrats voting 91 and 102, a total of 193, for the same office. In the 1973 election, the township electorate gave Nixon 476 votes and Humphrey, 103.
    Precinct one, north of Road 47, as of May 1, 1976, had 379 registered voters, and Precinct two, south of Road 47, had 347, a total of 726 for the township. In 1374, there were approximately 500 voters in the township. In 1886, one record shows, there were 726 voters in Marion, the same number as in this year of 1976.
    At the present time, the township has a Republican, Warren Stowers, serving as trustee, and an advisory board composed of Doran C. Calvert, Charles W. Robrer and FredZell, all Republicans. Robert Viehe and Robert Griffin represent the township on the five -member board of the Marion—Adams school district.
    While the population explosion is a great and growing problem in thousands of communities across the nation, it is of small concern in Marion township as the U. S. census records for the past one hundred years will demonstrate.
    The census of 1860 showed a head count  1038 in Marion, 1,786 in 1870, and 2, 307 in 1880, with the enumerated citizenry zooming to 2, 618 in 1890. Sometime in the 1890’s, the township's population began declining, slumping to 2, 370 in 1900, slipping further to 2,038 in 1910. and was down to 1,695 in 1920. The 1940 report showing 1,463 indicated a gain of 50 over the 1930 count of 1, 413. The next two decennial tabulations came out about even with 1, 369 reported for 1950, and 1,396 for 1960. The township’s population in the 1910 census completed six years ago was 1,295. a loss of 101 in the preceding decade.

That the decade centered by the year 1890 was the high point in Marion’s population growth agrees in ratio with Boone County's climbing to 26, 512 in the same period.  The county dropped to 22, 081 inhabitants in 1940, but began crawling upward there after, hitting 23, 993 in 1950, and 27, 543 in 1960.  The preliminary report of the 1970 census lists Boone County as now having 30, 493 citizens, of whom an estimated 53 plus per cent are urbanites.

That Marion township is and has always been a salubrious and healthy place in which to live is evidenced by the fact that it has but four cemeteries -Bethel, a mile east of Waugh; Jones, a mile northwest of Big Springs; Richardson or Big Springs at Big Springs; and Moore, on Road 47, opposite Sedwick Chapel. This listing is subject to correction; there may be another one or two unknown to the writer.
    There are also a few small and now abandoned family burial plots within the township. All of these cemeteries should be located and identified. Further, inscriptions and data on all the stones and markers in the several cemeteries should be copied and recorded for future genealogical and historical reference.
    Crossing Marion township are two highways of historical importance. Angling northwest and southeast through the western half of the township is the Michigan Road, now U, S. highway 421.

The Michigan road originated in 1826 when the Potawaromi Indians gave the state of Indiana a strip of land through their holdings in the north so that an unhindered hundred foot right-of-way could be planned and surveyed for a highway stretching from the Ohio river to Lake Michigan. Surveying of the road from Madison to Michigan City was done in 1828, and clearing of the strip followed. It was hewed through Boone county in 1531. When completed, it was for many years an important and the only connecting link between the two extreme ends of the state of Indiana. Running east and west to almost equally divide the township is the Straw— town road, now State Road 47. It was a much used trail between the Indian villages of Strawtown, in Hamilton county, and Ka-wi-a-ki-un-gi, now Thorntown, in Boone County. Overall, it was a segment of the long trail between Ft. Dearborn at Chicago, and Ft. Greenville, in Ohio.
    Both roads, Michigan and Strawtown, should be suitably and appropriately marked with tablets citing their old names, and giving highlights concerning their separate histories.
In compiling the foregoing history of Marion township, Boone County, Indiana, the writer has striven for historical accuracy. The work was not done in haste; many hours were spent in researching county records, scanning old histories and newspapers, and interviewing township residents. Some errors may have slipped in. Corrections will be welcomed when fortified by reliable or documented evidence.



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