1842 Election Documents, Harrison County, Indiana

Description:	Original handwritten election documents of Harrison County, Indiana from 1842. The documents are organized by the county’s existing eight townships of the period – Blue River, Boone, Franklin, Harrison, Heth, Morgan, Posey, and Washington. The documents reflect elections that took place in April and August of 1842. Local township officials such as constables, road supervisors, overseers of the poor, etc., were elected in April. In August, the voters were electing one senator and two state representatives for the state of Indiana, and a sheriff, coroner, and probate judge for Harrison County. Additional elections that took place at various times during the year include local township elections for justices of the peace. For each election, each township typically provides: 1) a list of the names of people who voted in the election; 2) a tally that lists each candidate with accompanying tally marks that note the number of votes the candidate received; and 3) a return statement signed by local election officials that reiterates and confirms the total votes each candidate received. These three records often appear in separate documents, but could be combined on a single paper or require several sheets, depending on the size of the voter turnout. One additional document from the August 1842 election contains a table of candidates for each office and the number of votes they received in each township. Note: Documents from Heth Township record that the voting took place in the town of New Market, which is now Mauckport. Platted in 1827 by Frederick Mauck, the town was referred to as Mauckport. In 1837 citizens of the area put forth a petition to rename the town New Market. It went by the new name for a few years, but eventually returned to Mauckport because another post office in the state was named New Market
Origin:	1842
Source:	http://cdm17251.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p17251coll27/id/843
Collection:	Harrison County Election Documents, 1833-1864
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Copyright:	This image may be printed or downloaded by individuals, schools or libraries for study, research or classroom teaching without permission. For other uses contact: genealogy@hcpl.lib.in.us
Geography:	Harrison County, Indiana
Subjects:	local elections local government voting voter turnout elections--United States—history political candidates constables justices of the peace senators legislators sheriffs coroners judges tallies

Further information on this record can be found at its source.