

The patent contains a legal description of the precise location of the 80 acre parcel that William Conner “patented” in 1823. We gave the legal description to a registered land surveyor, Mike Deboys, and it was a fairly straightforward matter for him to locate the parcel based on its legal description: The east half of the south east quarter of section twenty eight in Township seventeen of Range two, in the District of Brookville and State of Indiana, containing 80 acres. This is the parcel’s DNA, its unique marker that enables us to confirm today the location of Conner’s patent. His 80 acre land parcel would be the first parcel legally owned in Pike Township of Marion County following the native American occupancy of the area, so it has some significance just for that reason. But we now believe Conner, who was neither a farmer nor a settler in Marion County, was motivated by his knowledge of the unique characteristics of this specific parcel. We believe his desire to patent this particular parcel (as opposed to parcels more tillable) was motivated by his business interests that already were taking place on the site (such as a trading post) or that he believed a business enterprise such as land speculation might be profitable in this location. The discovery that the patent was graded second rate for farming, by the original surveyor of the Indiana Territory, further confirms that the parcel was being acquired for speculative purposes.