Corydon is a town in Harrison Township and the county seat of Harrison County, Indiana, located north of the Ohio River in the extreme southern part of the US state. Corydon was founded in 1808 and served as the capital of the Indiana Territory from 1813 to 1816. It was the site of Indiana's first constitutional convention, which was held June 10–29, 1816. Forty-three delegates convened to consider statehood for Indiana and drafted its first state constitution. Under Article XI, Section 11, of the Indiana 1816 constitution, Corydon was designated as the capital of the state, which it remained until 1825, when the seat of state government was moved to Indianapolis. In 1863, during the American Civil War, Corydon was the site of the Battle of Corydon, the only official pitched battle waged in Indiana during the war. More recently, the town's numerous historic sites have helped it become a tourist destination. A portion of its downtown area is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Corydon Historic District. As of the 2020 census, Corydon had a population of 3,153.
History
Early settlement
During the American Revolution, George Rogers Clark captured the surrounding area of what became the town of Corydon from the British, bringing it under the control of the fledgling United States government.Griffin, p. 8 The first American settlers entered Harrison County in 1792 and included the families of Harvey Heth and Squire Boone, who settled south of Corydon, and Dennis Pennington and the Harbisons, who settled east of Corydon.Griffin, p. 9 The region was in the midst of the Northwest Indian War during that period and the families were forced by Native Americans to leave the region and return to Kentucky. The families returned to the area in 1800 following the creation of the Indiana territory.
The territorial government completed the land survey of what would become Corydon in 1807, and the first official land purchases occurred in April of that year.Griffin, p. 11 In 1803, Edward Smith and his family became the first Americans to settle in what would become Corydon. Following the completion of the 1807 land survey, he purchased the tract of land he had already been living on; at that time his family were the only recorded inhabitants of the future site of the town. He purchased land at the edge of a fertile valley near a large spring, which is the site of the present-day Harrison County fairgrounds. William Henry Harrison, the first governor of the Indiana Territory and a future president of the United States, often stopped to rest at the Smith's home while travelling to and from Vincennes, the territorial capital.Griffin, p. 15
In 1804 Harrison purchased a tract of land where Big Indian Creek and Little Indian Creek join to become Indian Creek and decided to build a town on the site.Griffin, p. 14 Harrison built a two-story home in the town, but sold it in 1809.Griffin, p. 156 The town gets its name from "The Pastoral Elegy", a hymn that celebrates the death of a shepherd named Corydon. Tradition says that Harrison asked Edward Smith's daughter, Jenny, to name the town and she chose the name from Harrison's favorite hymn, "The Pastoral Elegy".
Harrison sold the town site to Harvey Heth in 1807. Corydon's official founding date of 1808 commemorates the year when Heth, a U.S. government surveyor and landowner, platted the town. Heth donated the town square for public use and sold individual lots to settlers and the territorial government. When Harrison County was established in 1808, Corydon became its county seat of government. The town originally consisted of 185 lots. In 1809 Corydon was connected by road to Doup's Ferry, to the south at Mauck's Port, providing access to the Ohio River for trade.Griffin, p. 17 The first county courthouse was built at the northwest corner of the town at the summit of High Street.
Corydon quickly grew into one of the most important early settlements in Indiana, in large part due to the political successes of its early inhabitants and as one of the main stops on the only land route to the territorial capital of Vincennes. During the War of 1812, Corydon sent a mounted militia company nicknamed the Yellow Jackets to support the territorial army. The company fought in the Battle of Tippecanoe, where it suffered more casualties than any other unit.Griffin, p. 35
Territorial capital (1813–1816)
Corydon became the second capital of the Indiana Territory on May 1, 1813, when it was relocated from Vincennes in Knox County. Opponents of William Henry Harrison, the former territorial governor, wanted to move the capital away from his political stronghold in Knox County. Supporters of the move felt that relocation of the territorial capital to the east would provide a more centralized location for its citizens, especially after its western portion was reorganized to form the Illinois Territory in 1809.
Corydon competed with Charlestown, Clarksville, Lawrenceburg, Madison, and Jeffersonville to become the new territorial capital. Dennis Pennington, a Harrison County representative and the speaker of the territorial legislature's lower house, helped secure the town's selection during the 1813 session of the Indiana Territory's general assembly. Pennington pointed out that Corydon would be an ideal location. The Harrison County court had approved a design for a new county courthouse on Corydon's public square in 1811 and it could be used as an assembly building for the territorial legislature. Pennington supervised construction of the limestone courthouse, which was nearly completed when Indiana's first state legislature convened at Corydon in 1816.Boomhower, p. 17.The limestone for the courthouse came from a nearby quarry. See Prior to 1816, the territorial legislature met in the original county courthouse on High Street.Griffin, p. 18
Paul and Susannah Mitchem became Quakers and immigrated to Harrison County from North Carolina in 1814, bringing with them 107 slaves whom they freed after arriving. Most of the former slaves then settled around the town of Corydon. Although some of the former slaves left, the group became one of the largest communities of free blacks in the state.
Constitutional convention, 1816
On April 19, 1816, President James Madison signed an Enabling Act that provided for the election of delegates to a convention at Corydon to consider statehood for Indiana. Forty-three delegates, including five men from Harrison County, convened June 10–29, 1816, to draft Indiana's first state constitution."The Setting for the Convention, " in Harrison County's delegates were John Boone, Davis Floyd, Daniel C. Lane, Dennis Pennington, and Patrick Shields. See Barnhart and Riker, pp. 441–42. The preamble of the constitution acknowledges the site of the historic gathering: "We the Representatives of the people of the Territory of Indiana, in Convention met, at Corydon, on Monday the tenth day of June in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixteen,..."
The delegates met in an unfinished log cabin near the Harrison County courthouse, which had not yet been completed; due to cramped conditions and the summer heat, the men often sought refuge outside under a giant elm tree, later named the Constitution Elm. Although the tree was lost to Dutch Elm Disease in 1825, a portion of its trunk has been preserved, surrounded by a sandstone memorial built by the WPA during the Great Depression in the 1930s. See also The delegates completed their work in nineteen days, adjourning on June 29, 1816, when the newly signed state constitution went into effect.Barnhart and Riker, p. 460. As outlined in Article XI, Section 11, of the constitution of 1816: "Corydon, in Harrison County shall be the seat of Government of the state of Indiana, until the year eighteen hundred and twenty-five, and until removed by law."
Corydon's selection as the capital led to rapid growth of the town and a housing shortage. There were only three taverns for visitor lodging in 1813. A fourth and much larger tavern, the Kintner House Tavern, opened in 1819. Many officials, including three successive Governors, and their staff moved to Corydon and built large homes in the town. The town hosted meetings from national officials, including an 1819 visit by United States President James Monroe and Andrew Jackson.Griffin, p. 33
State capital (1816–1825)
On November 4, 1816, the Indiana General Assembly met for the first time at Corydon under the new constitution and state government."The Final Steps to Statehood," Bennett, The Indiana Historian, pp. 10–11. President James Madison signed the congressional resolution admitting Indiana as the nineteenth state in the Union on December 11, 1816, and Corydon began a new era as the first state capital of Indiana.Lemmon, p. 5.
The Harrison County courthouse, now known as the Old Capitol, served as Indiana's first state capitol building. It housed state government offices from 1816 until 1825. Several other historic structures in Corydon date from the early statehood era, including the Governor's Mansion and the Old Treasury Building (Indiana's first state office building), which were built in 1817, and the Colonel Thomas Lloyd Posey home, among others.Colonel Posey was the son of Thomas Posey, the governor of the Indiana Territory from 1813 until 1816. See Griffin, pp. 19–21. Corydon's Grand Masonic Lodge, the first in the state, was built in 1819.
During the years Corydon served as a territorial and state capital, it was home to a number of politicians; notable residents during this time included Davis Floyd, a prominent local politician; two governors of Indiana, Jonathan Jennings and Ratliff Boon (the state's first and second governors, respectively); Dennis Pennington, the first Speaker of the Indiana Senate; and William Hendricks, Indiana's first U. S. Representative, its third governor, and a U.S. Senator.Gugin, p. 54
The state constitution's provision making Corydon the seat of state government was not a popular one, especially among the citizens of rival towns. Others expressed concern that the town's geographic location in the extreme southern part of Indiana would become inconvenient as the state's population center shifted northward; however, Dennis Pennington and other Harrison County representatives to the Indiana General Assembly successfully resisted attempts to move the seat of government from Corydon until 1825.Barnhart and Riker, p. 461–63."The Constitution of 1816," Bennett, The Indiana Historian, p. 12. Governor Hendricks signed a legislative bill in 1824 to move the state capital to Indianapolis, effective January 10, 1825.
Post-capital period After the seat of state government moved to Indianapolis in 1825, Corydon continued its role as the seat of county government and a market town for the surrounding agricultural area. Includes In 1826 a new County Clerk's office was constructed which remained the principal county office until 1848. During the early days of the town, Big Indian Creek and Little Indian Creek were both used for drinking water, bathing, and sewage, which resulted in a cholera outbreak in 1832. Following the outbreak, the town only used the creeks for bathing and multiple wells were dug for drinking water. In 1836, the town began spreading gravel on the roads, which had been dirt roads before.Griffin, p. 23