Harrison Genealogy Repository

Notes

From the book " Pearls Along the Walbash" by Newlin H Yount

William Harrison Warren County, Indiana Chapter 54 pgs. 157-168

" In the month of November, 1828, one William Harrison built a large log house on the bank of the Walbash River at the foot of Main Street. It was double, and on one side he had his residence, and on the other he furnished with a rude counter, behind which he erected some rough shelves. It was a question of labor, but not a question of money to put up shelving in those days. All Mr. Harrison had to do to produce shelves was to make some wooden pins with his axe, bore holes in the wall of logs behind his counter with an auger & drive in the pins and then split some logs with a maul and wedge into slabs, and smooth the slabs with a broadax until they were thin enough for boards to make shelving. As soon as his counter & shelving were in position, Mr. Harrison, who had at odd times cut and corded a large lot of wood on the bank of the river on land he had bought of the government, sold this wood to a passing river steamer for eighty or ninety dollars. With this sum and other money he had earned, he took passage for Cincinnati."

" In due time , Mr. Harrison returned from Cincinnati with a nice stock of groceries, notions, etc. which he proceeded to arrange in the most attractive manner on his shelves. A license to sell whiskey was next obtained that cost him $500 dollars a year. Later on, he bought a horse ferry boat somewhere on the river and established a ferry, which he had for several years from his (William's) port to the Fountain County side. It was thus the town came to be called Williamsport. And so far as can be learned, Mr. Harrison was the first resident of the town."

1818, Moved to Greene County, Indiana and a few years later moved to Warren County, Indiana