362     HISTORY OF JACKSON COUNTY.
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                      CHAPTER IV.
 
BROWNSTOWN TOWNSHIP - SURFACE AND SOIL - ORGANIZATION - SETTLE-
  MENT - FORTS AND BLOCK-HOUSES - MURDERS BY THE INDIANS -
  EARLY MILLING - MANUFACTURERS - ELIZABETHTOWN - SHIELDS -
  GRAVEL ROADS - CHURCHES, ETC.
 
THIS township took its name from the county seat, which, as
elsewhere stated, was named in honor of Gen. Jacob Brown, who 
was distinguished for his many acts of bravery in the war of
1812. The character of the soil and surface adapts it to the
growth of a variety of products. Its broad valleys yield large
crops of the cereals, while the higher lands are well adapted to
the growth of watermelons, and on the summit of the highest
hills thousands of fruit trees have been planted which yield large
crops annually. The farmers are well advanced in the methods
of tilling the soil; the implements are the inventions of modern
civilization. The self-binder, the self-rake, the sulky-plow, and
other modern inventions, when contrasted with the reaping-hook,
mowing-scythe, the hand-rake, the wooden pitchfork, and the
wooden plow of sixty years ago, readily show what invention has
done for this generation.
 
 
                     ORGANIZATION.
 
On the 10th day of February, 1817, it is shown by the record
that Abraham Huff, John Ruddick and Thomas Carr, commis-
sioners elect of Jackson County, met at the house of John Mil-
roy, in Brownstown, and organized the first Commissioners'
Court of Jackson County. The first business transacted was ar-
ranging the boundaries of the townships of Driftwood, Flinn and
Brownstown. The township at this time included a considerable