Rensselaer: The Merchant Who Started Over

Rensselaer began as Newton, platted on June twelfth, eighteen thirty-nine, by a merchant named James Van Rensselaer who had come west after his business in Utica, New York collapsed during the Panic of eighteen thirty-seven. He bought land in Jasper County and laid out the future county seat. In eighteen forty-four the town was renamed Rensselaer in his honor.

Jasper County itself took its name from Sergeant William Jasper, the Revolutionary War hero who replanted the American flag under fire at Fort Moultrie in seventeen seventy-six and died at the Siege of Savannah in seventeen seventy-nine. So this small Indiana city carries two names: a failed New York merchant who rebuilt his life on the prairie, and a soldier who never made it home.