Transcribed for the Rush Co. INGenWeb Project by Mark S. Mount

This is the central township of the county and contains the county seat. As it was properly surmised that the county seat would be located somewhere near the center of the county there was considerable settlement here even before the commissioners acting for the state decided on the location of a county seat, and its development from the beginning has kept pace with Rushville, the county's chief city. Rushville township is bounded on the north by Jackson township and one-half section of Union township, on the east by Union and Noble townships, on the south by Anderson township and on the west by Walker township and two sections of Posey township. It is well drained, Big Flat Rock river entering the township in the northeast corner and flowing out in the southwest corner, while Ben Davis creek and other small tributaries afford additional natural drainage. It is said that Dr. Marshall Sexton, son of Dr. Horatio Sexton, was the first white child born in the township. That was in 1822. The first miller was W. B. Laughlin, the surveyor who cast in his lot with this community after completing the Government survey hereabout. He also was the first school teacher and in other ways impressed himself upon the community in its "day of small things." As the general history of Rushville township follows so closely that of the town of Rushville the reader is referred for further details in this connection to the chapter relating to the county seat elsewhere in this volume, though it will be proper here to give the names of those who are mentioned as among the first settlers of the township and most of who located outside the town of Rushville, among these being Henry Thornbury, John Hale, David Morris, John Oldham, Joseph and Henry Nichols, Stephen Sims, Thomas and Benjamin Lakin, Ewell Kindall, Robert English, David McHatton, Charles Elias Poston, Elijah Hefflin, Samuel Allenthrope, William Junken, Sullivan S. Ross, Christian Clymer, Houston Morris, James Walker, Lot Green, George Guffin, William and Wesley Moffett, Daniel Smith, Rutherford J. Boyd, Amaziah and Alamander Fowler, Reuben Roland, McCormick Zion, David Fleener, Elijah Lewark, Henry Webster, Gustavus Cowger, Ivan Fleener, William Caldwell, William Lochridge, John Cavitt, John, James, William and Michael Lower, Richard Thornbury, William Dill, James Davis, Amariah Sutton, George Mull, Thomas Stewart, Cuthbert Webb, Fielding and Isaac B. Jones, John Parsons, Andrew Gilsoon, Artemus Moore, David Crawford, John Asher, Pressley Moore, John Phillips, Weir Cassady, Silas, John T. and William T. Hilligoss, Isaac Carr, Benjamin Sampson, Samuel Jackson, Robert Gardner, Sampson Cassady, Thomas Cassady, Sr., James Havens, William Newell, James McManus. Thomas McCarty, John Oliver, Sr., James Anderson, Jonathan Boyce and Jacob Minx.