The future state of Indiana was first regulated by passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787. The governing structure created by this act was superposed over an area that was still largely contested with the country's
natives, although they were being gradually pushed out of the area. In 1818,
a series of treaties was concluded, resulting in the confinement of the Miami tribe to the reserve area and the removal of the Delaware tribe, who had dominated central and east central Indiana, to west of the Mississippi River by 1820, clearing the way for colonization. The area was called the Delaware New Purchase until it was divided into Wabash County in the northwest and Delaware County in the southeast on January 2, 1820. Those counties were soon after dissolved, and the areas came to be called the "Wabash New Purchase" and "Delaware New Purchase" (renamed the "Adams New Purchase" in 1827). Subsequently, 35 new counties (including Morgan, authorized on February 15, 1822) were carved out of the original area. It was named for Gen.
Daniel Morgan, who defeated the British at the
Battle of Cowpens in the
Revolutionary War. The first settlers arrived in Morgan County in 1822. They came mostly from southern states. The Mooresville area and surrounding communities received large numbers of southern Quakers, driven to migrate because of their opposition to slavery.
Paul Hadley, a Mooresville resident, was the designer of the current
Indiana flag, as well as a locally prominent water color artist in the early twentieth century. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mineral springs in Martinsville gave rise to several spas, and the nickname of the Martinsville High School athletic teams has subsequently been the Artesians. County government took several steps forward in the 2000s, creating a new Plan Commission, re-instituting a county economic development organization, and establishing the county's first Park and Recreation Board between 2000 and 2004. Morgan County also was the first county in the metropolitan Indianapolis region to establish a smoking ban ordinance for restaurants, which came into effect in 2004.
Courthouse The first building used for Morgan County courts was the log house of a pioneer. Work began in 1823 to build the first courthouse, a two-story log house. A brick courthouse replaced it in 1833. The Morgan County courthouse was designed by
Isaac Hodgson in the
Italianate style. It was built from 1857 to 1859 by Perry M. Blankenship of Martinsville at a cost of $32,000. It was almost identical to Hodgson's
Jennings County courthouse in Vernon, which was also begun in 1857, but the Martinsville building received an addition in the 1970s; the original section was also remodeled and renovated at that time. The building is of red brick with white stone quoins and has tall windows with round arches, arranged in pairs. It is one of the few remaining pre-Civil War courthouses. ==Geography==