Georgetown, Indiana: A Justice's Birthplace

Georgetown in Floyd County was platted in eighteen thirty-three by George Waltz, who named the town for himself, twelve miles west of Louisville. It grew as a farming community along the Louisville pike. What distinguishes Georgetown in the history books is that it was the birthplace of Sherman Minton, born here on October twentieth, eighteen ninety.

Minton worked his way through Indiana University Law School, was elected a United States Senator from Indiana in nineteen thirty-four, and was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Harry Truman in nineteen forty-nine. He served until nineteen fifty-six, supporting racial desegregation during a pivotal era for civil rights. A small town that platted itself around a landowner's name produced the only Indiana-born justice ever to sit on the Supreme Court.