Person:John Dawson (49)

The following is copied from chapter 20 (Miller Township), page 207 & 208 of History of Dearborn County^S1:
The First Settler
John Dawson was one of the first men to settle in the township and his son, Harrison Dawson, who lived on the lands entered from the government by his father, is authority for the statement that his father came into the town ship in 1799. Mr. Dawson died in 1848, in his seventy-fourth year, having resided in the house in which he died more than forty years. He was a native of the eastern shore of Maryland, but was raised in Virginia, and when grown, immigrated to Tennessee, thence to Kentucky, and from there to Miller town ship. He at one time was a large landowner in the township.

It is said of Mr. Dawson that during the Indian troubles several of a band of redmen entered his cabin and attempted to tomahawk Dawson and his wife. He could talk the Indian language sufficiently well to make them understand his meaning, and drawing his rifle upon them. told them not to stir upon their peril, for the first one that moved his tomahawk would be a dead man. Holding them all at bay, he talked to them and demanded that they get out of the house, which they were very prompt to obey. He shot a large panther which was just in the act of jumping upon him, and also killed a large elk on the Darling ridge, which is thought to have been the last in the neighborhood. One of Mr. Dawson’s sons was appointed under General Jackson to a position in the land office at Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and he there became prominent in the affairs of that locality; his children and descendants are well known and active in public affairs there to this day.

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Miller Township - The First Settler, in History of Dearborn County, Indiana: her people, industries, and institutions. (Evansville, Ind.: Unigraphic, 1980)
   Page 207 & 208, 1915.