Before 1755, France claimed all territory west of the Allegheny Mountains to the Mississippi and from the Gulf to northern Canada as New France, divided into two parts across central Indiana at “Halfway,” where Catholic Jesuit stone crosses marked the line between the lower Louisiana Diocese and the upper Quebec Diocese, and one stone cross stood north at Halfway until the 1870s at S.R. 1 and Jay County Road 800S. After the French and Indian War of 1755-1763, this area and all of Canada fell to England, which awarded the greatest part of the Northwest to its Virginia colony. From 1763 until 1789, Virginia governed her northwest county of Augusta, including the Indiana area, then deeded the area to the new U.S. federal government, having made Kentucky County into a new state in 1787. The Northwest Territory lasted from 1789 to 1800, and Indiana Territory was created in 1800 out of the Northwest Territory; Illinois and Michigan Territory were later formed from it when Indiana became a state in 1816. Population grew in land cessions of 1795, 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1809, with counties being formed for the new state once the Indians were removed. In 1816, statehood came with 13 counties and a population of 65,000. After the New Purchase Treaty of St. Mary’s in 1818, all central Indiana opened to land sales, new counties were added rapidly, and by 1844 Indians had been removed to reservations in the West, where a fifth died of starvation.