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his services to the city. Ralston’s body had rested in Green Lawn Cemetery half a century when it was carried to Crown Hill escorted by half a dozen old citizens and laid in the teachers’ lot by the side of John B. Dillon, Indiana’s distinguished historian.
Fordham, the second surveyor, well educated and of a discerning mind, was a member of an ancient family in the east of England. He joined the celebrated Illinois colony at English Prairie, in 1817. He was a pupil of George Stephenson, inventor of the locomotive steam engine.
Had I been more familiar with the history of my native city I would have looked with greater interest, when I visited Newcastle-on-
The association of the men concerned with the beginning of Indianapolis, with those of the far away world will bear repeating—Harrison with the beautiful Miss Patterson and Jerome Bonaparte; Ralston with Lord Roslin, Aaron Burr, L’Enfant, La Fayette, and Fordham with George Stephenson.
The survey completed, with certain reservations for public purposes, a state house, a state university, a court house, etc., the town lots heavily timbered, staked off at streets running through the woods, were offered for sale.
Now we witness the beginning of the town, the news having gone abroad that the capital was located immigrants began to arrive from Ohio, Kentucky, the Carolinas, from Pennsylvania, New England and Virginia. To follow “the course of empire” was a difficult and dangerous undertaking, since the roads were hardly more than trails worn by man and beast, and Indians lurked in the forest resentful of the change taking place in their old hunting ground. White river, an uncertain
