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Daviess County History

Technological innovation, 400,000-pound locomotives, bears, outlaws, buffalo, Indians, presidential candidates and West Point all figure prominently in Daviess County history.

Daviess County enjoys a rich place in American legend, fact and folklore. History buffs and casual visitors alike will delight in the preserved history of the region, featured prominently at the Daviess County Historical Museum located on Main Street in Washington.

With Daviess County located a few miles from the first capital of the Indiana Northwest Territory and the heartbeat of western American expansion, bands of Indian warriors, British and French soldiers and American troops crisscrossed the county region in the 1700s and 1800s. No less than 11 small forts once guarded pioneers within the county, which was named for Colonel John Hamilton Daviess—a hero killed in action at the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe.

The county seat of Washington—originally named Liverpool in the early 1800s by a handful of pioneers—was once home to the transportation powerhouse called simply “The Shops.” Roughly halfway between Baltimore and St. Louis, the B&O Railroad once maintained a large-scale railroad repair facility and roundhouse in Washington that lifted the region out of the 1800s economic “Long Depression.” A $75,000 gamble (an astonishing investment by 1860s rural standards) by city officials paid off handsomely, as the B&O facility would employ thousands of engineers, administrators and yard-workers in the decades to come. Wealth generated by the railroad industry resulted in the construction of stately homes and businesses throughout the region, many of which are still standing.

Major American political history is intertwined in the county. No less than three national presidential candidates or figures have made formal visits to the county seat, with Abraham Lincoln visiting the city and region a number of times and delivering an address to Washington residents on Main Street on October 25th, 1844. Richard Nixon formally kicked off his successful 1968 national campaign before a packed house of state dignitaries and local residents at the then-new gymnasium at Washington High School in February 1968. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy also made a storied visit to the city a few months later, shortly before making his historic remarks in Indianapolis upon the untimely death of Martin Luther King.

The home base of senior U.S. Senator and technology icon Homer Capehart, Capehart Farms in Daviess County hosted the resurgence of the national Republican Party in 1938 at what is now known as “The Cornfield Conference.” Exhausted by political setbacks during the Great Depression, more than 50,000 national and regional Republican leaders gathered to feast on non-stop oratory and more than 70,000 steamed clams and 5,000 chickens. Capehart funded his political career and agricultural growth with patent and development monies generated from his invention of the disc-switching “jukebox,” technology which remains in use today.

The county rightly boasts of a rich Indian history, with the famous “Buffalo Trace” crossing its southern tier. Thousands of Indians from the Kickapoo, Shawnee and Delaware tribes hunted and lived in the region. Burial mounds from this time remain throughout the county.

Those interested in American military history must visit the county’s Main Street museum. Congressional appointments of Daviess County young men to the Army’s West Point Academy were frequent in the 19th and 20th centuries, and many unique mementos of those legendary days are available for viewing. Historical archives of Daviess County Civil War involvement and veteran accounts of the World War II, Korean and Vietnam conflicts also can viewed at the Museum.

For more information, please visit www.daviesscountyhistory.org.