FranklinCountyIn.com
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Franklin County Convention, Recreation and Visitors Commission - Citadel Network
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About Us
We are working on compiling information about the various communities and general history of Franklin County. If you have any informtion you would like to contribute, please let us know!
History of Oldenburg Indiana "Village of Spires"
In 1817 William George and his brother left their Pennsylvania home to strike out for the state of Indiana. Arriving by raft in Cincinnati, they continued west over the hills across the Ohio-Indiana border literally blazing the trail that took them to a site in the north bank of the East Harvey Branch creek.
Some twenty years later little had changed: a few hardy settlers had formed clearings and begun farming. But a new breed of people was on the way. From Germany, large numbers of immigrants landed in Cincinnati as the point from which they spread throughout Ohio and Indiana. Some of these immigrants settled near the clearings of William George and the others. And to these Germans, the area became fondly known as Neu Oldenburg. Father Joseph Ferneding (the traveling missionary) met boats coming down the Ohio River to Cincinnati or up the river to Lawrenceburg and invited the German settlers to come to Oldenburg. The clearing grew to a hamlet. In the platting of the town in1837, land was reserved for the tiny log church known as St. Mary's, which was already under construction. But it has hardly yet "Village of Spires."
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English
