The first recorded white man to come to Posey County was Tom Jones in 1794. Posey County was named for Thomas Posey, governor of the Indiana Territory when the county was created on Sept. 7, 1814, and after several changes its present boundary lines were fixed in 1823. James Black built the first horse-powered mill in 1810. The first county seat was Blackford in Jan. 1815, and the first court was held there in Oct. 1816, before the county seat was moved to Mt. Vernon in 1825. The county seal, adopted in 1835, honored William Henry Harrison. A plank road with toll gates was built between New Harmony and Mt. Vernon in 1851. The Minerva Society, organized in New Harmony in 1859, was the first women’s club in the United States. The first railroad line through Posey County was the St. Louis and Southeastern in 1869. The present courthouse was built in 1867 at a cost of $95,000. The first judge of Posey County Circuit Court was Isaac Blackford, the county clerk and recorder was William E. Stewart, the treasurer was Samuel Jones, the auditor was Thomas F. Prosser, and the sheriff was John Carson. New Harmony, Posey County’s most famous town, was the site of two experiments in communal living, first under Father Rapp and the Harmony Society from 1814 to 1824, and then under Robert Owen from 1825 to 1860. A Scotchman, Andrew McFadin, a friend of Daniel Boone, crossed the Ohio and discovered the location of the present city in 1798, choosing it because of its elevation. In 1806 he built a log cabin at the foot of what is now College Avenue, and he was joined by his cousins William and Andrew McFadin. At William McFadin’s suggestion the site was called McFadin’s Bluff. Other early settlers included William Weir, Thomas Givens, Aaron Williams, Aaron Burlison, Absolum Duckworth, Paul and Thomas Casselberry, Thomas Duckworth, William and Hugh Todd, John Black, and the Rev. Samuel Jones, a Baptist minister. General William Henry Harrison purchased all 371.82 acres of the section on May 25, 1807. The first white child born in the vicinity was Malinda Weir in 1807. The first steamboat passed the village in 1811, the first school was built in 1814, and on Muster Day in 1816 Sam Rowe proposed honoring George Washington by renaming the town Mt. Vernon. In 1816 John Wagoner laid out the first plat on the west side of Mill Creek and the present public square, when fifteen families were living there. The county seat was moved to Mt. Vernon in 1825. The town was first incorporated in 1832, the first lodge, the I.O.O.F., was instituted in 1848, and Mt. Vernon was incorporated a second time in 1849, when the village had 350 residents.