INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 545 



1 know that some of her descendants are among yon, for report has 

 gone abroad of the versatility and entoriirising activity of your club 

 women. We have heard of youv work in the Free Kindergarten, among 

 the poor, in the management of the Or|)hiins' Home, in temperance and 

 the churches. We were rejoiced to learn, at the Connersville meeting, 

 about your "Classes for the Public," and I liope other clubs were inspired 

 to go and do likewise. 



EARLY TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES OF INDIANA. "IN THE 

 DAYS OF AULD LANG SYNE." 



[Re&.d at the Marion County Agricultural and Horticultural Society.] 



This is the theme allotted. As this is a kind of class meeting of the old 

 folks, so, as in the Methodist class meeting, experience is the tost of the 

 speaker. So for this occasion the experience of the trials— troubles tra- 

 versing the highways of Indiana, will mainly be the record, "quorum pars 

 fui." (That is, about seventy-five years past.) Prior to that time, history- 

 tradition must supply. 



By the acts of the General Assembly of Indiana, the site of the seat 

 of government was fixed at Indianapolis, api)roved .January G. 1821. 

 Corydon. Harrison County, bordering the Ohio River, had been the capital 

 since ISK). Public opinion demanded a central location. From the year 

 1810 the attention of the Legislature had been directed to the facilities of 

 better roads throughout the settled portions of the State. 



An act approved January 9, 1821. three days after Indianapolis was 

 selected as the capital, authorized the location of a road from Lawrence- 

 burg to the "seat of government." 



In the session of the Legislature in 1821-22, a law was enacted author- 

 izing quite a number of roads that found their terminus at Indianapolis, 

 notably Horseshoe Bend, via Paoli, Palestine, Bloomington: Mock's Ferry, 

 on the Ohio River, via Corydon, Salem, Brownstown: Madison, via Ver- 

 non, Columbus; Lawrenceburg and Brookville: Oxford, via Connersville, 

 and points on the Ohio State line, via Richmond. This act appointed 

 Christopher Harrison as commissioner to apply for and receipt from the 

 United States government $100,000. known as the 3-iier-cent. fund, which 

 as commissioner he was to distribute among the various si)ecial commis- 

 sioners for the roads designated by the act, to build their respective roads. 



In the subsequent sessions of the Legislature other roads were author- 

 ized as the seltlements of various parts of the State demanded. In 1835 

 the State determined on a universal sj-stem of roads, railroads and canals, 

 and passed laws which would have made each village, town, city— in fact, 

 every farm— neighbors to Indianapolis and the variouj commercial centers 

 of business in the United States. 



35— Agri. 



