Decatur, Indiana: Named for a Naval Hero, Founded by an Offer of Cash

Decatur is the county seat of Adams County in northeast Indiana, and it exists where it does because of a real estate offer in eighteen thirty-six. Town founder Samuel Rugg laid out Decatur in that year and pushed to create Adams County with Decatur as its seat. The city was named for Commodore Stephen Decatur, the naval hero of the Barbary Wars and the War of eighteen twelve.

Adams County had just been created in eighteen thirty-six, its first settlers arriving after the end of the Black Hawk War and the opening of the Erie Canal. Decatur remains the largest city in Adams County, a market center in the flat Maumee watershed of northeast Indiana.