Old Settlers Monument
Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
These stones tell the story of Whitley County's pioneers. The county was organized in eighteen thirty-eight, carved from neighboring territory, and named for Colonel William Whitley, a Virginia born frontiersman who had moved to Kentucky.
The first settlers of European descent arrived around eighteen thirty-seven, drawn west after the Black Hawk War and the opening of the Erie Canal. Many were Yankee families from New England, descended from the Puritans. The county seat, Columbia City, grew up beside it. The stones gathered into this monument once formed the foundation of one of the first buildings in that early town. Pieced back together, they stand as a small memorial to the people who first broke this ground.
