Brief Owen County
History


The territory which Owen county is a part of originally belonged to the Miami, Pottawatome, Delaware and Eel River tribes of Indians. The land was ceded to the white by the accumulated chiefs of those tribes by the treaty of Fort Wayne on September 6, 1809. Owen county was first settled by the whitesin 1816, and at that point, any Indian fighting in the area stopped. However, for several years after 1816 the Indians did continue to gather their foods by hunting and fishing in the county.

The county gained its name in memory of Major Abraham Owen, a Kentucky officer who was killed at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Spencer, the county seat, was named in memory of Captain Spencer, another soldier of Kentucky who also died in the Battle of Tippecanoe.

Owen county is twenty ones miles in length, north to south and twenty three miles going east to west. There are 393 sections of land divided into 14 townships.

Owen county shares common borders with: Putnam on the north; Greene on the south; Clay on the west and in the east both Morgan and Monroe counties.






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