2 THE A-U DUB GON 3B age eae 
Jasper County until 1859 had a Beaver and a Barker Township 
near the lake. During 1859 the present Newton County was carved 
out of the west side of Jasper County and contained all of Beaver 
Lake. Barker Township was not renamed. When the first officers 
of the newly formed Newton County, at the direction of Thomas R. 
Original Lake Outline as shown in the Illustrated 
Historical Atlas of Indiana, published by Baskin, 
Forster & Co., Chicago, 1876. 
Barker, sheriff and official county organizer, met in Kent, now Kent- 
land, on April 21, 1860, there were but two small buildings in that place. 
Beaver Lake was purchased from the U. S. Government in 1853 
by John P. Dunn and Amzie B. Condit. They bought the ground 
surrounding and bordering the lake, the water area up to that time 
not having been surveyed, and sold soon. afterward to Michael C. 
Bright, who claimed the water area as well as the boundaries and 
platted the ground in 1857 into 427 forty-acre tracts of part water 
and part land. By some arrangement the alternate tracts were deeded 
to the State of Indiana. In 1865 the records show that the state dis- 
posed of its tracts. 
Beaver Lake was well known in those early days in spite of the 
