Place:Ambia, Benton, Indiana, United States

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Ambia is a town in Hickory Grove Township, Benton County, Indiana, United States. The population was 239 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Lafayette, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Ambia was laid out by Ezekiel M. Talbot and his wife Marietta on February 22, 1875, and named for their daughter Ambia Talbot. (The couple had two years earlier planned the nearby town of Talbot.) Its first building was a house erected by James C. Pugh which was soon joined by a grain elevator, general store and blacksmith. A drug store, hardware store, hotel, physician and a variety of other establishments followed.

Ambia was a stop on the Lafayette, Muncie and Bloomington Railroad (later the Lake Erie and Western) which ran between Lafayette and Hoopeston. The Wabash Railway Company, which built a stretch of the LM&B through Illinois, originally wanted to construct a railway switch at a site known as Weaver City, a small town just west of Ambia in Vermilion County, Illinois; the owner of the property, however, refused to grant land for it. In response, the railway officials sent a force of men without notice to move the station house from Weaver City half a mile east across the state border, which they did on the Sunday morning of March 10, 1873. The town's businesses and residents followed and Weaver City faded from existence while Ambia sprang up near the station's new site.

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