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Orange County, Indiana,
was organized in 1816 and named for Orange County, North Carolina, from which
early settlers came.
The principal towns in Orange
County are Orleans, Paoli, West Baden Springs, and
French Lick.
The Town of Orleans
was founded in March, 1815, two months after General Andrew Jackson's victory
at New Orleans,
for which it was named. Orleans has the
distinction of being the oldest town in the county as it was organized before
Orange County was created. Orleans produced
one of Indiana's outstanding military leaders during the Civil War, Brevet
Brigadier General William T. Spicely. From a battlefield commission of
captaincy at Buena Vista during the Mexican War, Spicely rose through the
ranks to general, commanding the 24th Indiana
Regiment during the Civil War. General Spicely and his men assisted Major
General Uylsses S. Grant in a major battle preceeding the siege at Vicksburg, enabling
Union forces to obtain control of the river city from Confederate forces. The
victory at Vicksburg
gave momentum to the defeat of the Confederacy.
Paoli, the county seat, was platted in 1816,
and was named for Pasquale Paoli (1725-1807), a Corsican patriot, the
namesake of Paoli Ashe, son of Samuel Ashe, governor of North Carolina.
Dr. John R. Lane, an itinerant medicine
peddler, built the first resort hotel in West Baden Springs, in 1851, and
named it for the famous spa, West Baden, in Germany. It was first known as
Mile Lick, since it was one mile from French Lick. Lee W. Sinclair operated
the lavish West Baden Springs Hotel in 1888, until it was destroyed by fire
in 1901. Sinclair rebuilt a new and larger hotel structure by 1902 with 708
rooms, one of the widest unsupported domes in the world, 208 feet in
diameter, and with a mosaic tile floor in the atrium.
The Town of French Lick
was laid out in 1857 in French
Lick Township.
An early French settlement here near an animal lick gave the salt spring its
name. Dr. William A. Bowles established the first health resort at French
Lick around 1840. A man of many endeavors, Bowles was a physician, minister,
politician, army officer, and newspaper editor. During the Civil War, he was
active in the Knights of the Golden
Circle, and was found guilty of treason by an
army tribunal in Indianapolis
in 1864 with four other co-conspirators and sentenced to death. In a very
famous United States
Supreme Court case, Ex Parte Milligan, the action of the army court was
declared unconstitutional. The resort industry that
Bowles founded in French Lick is world-famous today as the French
Llck Spring Hotel.
The Orange County
Courthouse is located on a gently sloping hill in the center of Paoli. For
many generations the structure has been the unique dominating architectural
feature of the community, and to many, serves as the symbol of Orange County. The first courthouse was
located near the northwest corner of the public square provided for in the
platting of the original town of Paoli
by Jonathan Lindley in 1816. The structure was designed to be a temporary building
in order to reserve space in the center of the public square for another
courthouse to be erected shortly thereafter. The structure was a very
unpretentious one-room, log building without floors or windows, and in the
style of construction that was typical in that day. John Pickard was paid
$25.00 for its construction in 1816.
The second courthouse was a two-story stone
building, with twin chimneys in the Federal style of architecture common in Indiana during the
early 1800's. Plans for its construction were made in 1817 and it was
apparently finished in early 1819. Jonathan Lindley was the builder. The
structure served its purpose until the late 1840's when it became apparent
that a larger building was necessary to meet the needs of a growing county.
Its original cost was $3,950.00.
The style of the present courthouse is Greek
Revival. This particular style was introduced in America
by Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), an English architect who settled in Philadelphia in 1798.
His design for the Bank of Pennsylvania
gave this country its first building in Greek style. This type of
architecture became almost immediately popular in the United States
for government buildings and subsequently for private homes. The
architectural beauty of the present courthouse is recognized nationally.
In 1933, Thomas Hart Benton, the noted
American artist, included the building in his much discussed "Mural
History of Indiana" painted for the Chicago Century of
Progress Exposition. The mural is now displayed at the Indiana University
auditorium. Photographs of the structure have appeared nationally in Life
Magazine, The Architectural Forum, and The American Bar Association Journal,
not to mention countless Hoosier publications. The architect of the courthouse
is not officially recorded. Local historians confer this honor on William
Watson Harmon, a skilled carpenter, from Berkshire,
Mass., who arrived in Orange County
in the late 1830's. The architectural style was probably selected by the
building committee corposed of Thomas Volney Thornton, John H. Campbell,
Arthur J. Simpson, John A. Ritter, John Baker, John C. Albert, and Dr.
Cornelius White, who were among the leading citizens of Orange County at the
time. The courthouse was completed in 1850 at a cost of $13,561.85.
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