Joseph Wilson and Uriah Powers first operated a flour mill and a sawmill around which the village of Elizabethtown grew up in the 1830s. Wilson named the town after his daughter, Elizabeth, and had high hopes for the community as a prospective county seat of a county which was formed from land in the northern part of Delaware County and unorganized territory to the north. When Blackford County was platted in 1839 and did not include Elizabethtown, its importance began to wane, though a distillery and mill continued to operate here until 1870.