CHAPTER III.
First Settlements of Lawrence Co., with Township Histories
(Source: History of Lawrence and Monroe Counties, Indiana; their people, industries and institutions.  Publ. Indianapolis, Ind. - B. F. Bowen & Co., 1914)

     Lawrence county was at first a portion of Knox and Harrison counties.  In the year 1814 it became identified with Washington county, and in 1816 a part of Orange county.  The county of Lawrence itself was created in 1818, and named for Capt. James Lawrence, a United States navy officer, commander of the frigate "Chesapeake."  Captain Lawrence lost his life in the battle with the English frigate "Shannon."
     The first years of the nineteenth century saw very little settlement in this county by white men.  The Indians were hostile and the perils of making a home were great.  The slow immigration of the tribes to the West had not yet begun, and the pioneer hesitated to be the first to combat with their treacherous customs.  The Ohio river was then the avenue of commerce to the Middle West, and consequently the settlement of the state proceeded northward from this rover.  The advance was slow, made so by the necessity for large numbers to keep together in order to repel the Indian attacks.  Not until the year 1811, the year of the battle of Tippecanoe, did Lawrence county receive any number of white families.
     Records show that probably the first settlement of any consequence was made at the spot where Leesville, Flinn township, now stands, on the eastern boundary of the county.  The settlers of this place had left Lee county, Virginia, in 1809, and passed the next winter in Kentucky.  In February, 1810, they came to the above mentioned place and built a fort near the present grist mill in Leesville.  The block-house completed, the men journeyed back to Kentucky after their families.  These families were the Guthries and Flinns, who were attacked by the Potawatomies later, and their names have been perpetuated in the history of the county as the highest types of honor, courage and self-sacrifice, and today their descendants are numbered among the most respected citizens of Lawrence county.  Daniel Guthrie and his sons and Jacob and William Flinn were the men of the group, and each was a frontiersman skilled in all the arts of pioneer life, in hunting, fishing, farming, and in fighting the warlike tribes.  Daniel Guthrie is noted as being one of the Continentals who defeated General Braddock prior to the Revolutionary war.

FLINN TOWNSHIP

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