City Of Seymour

History:

The first settler on the land that is now Seymour was James Shields who brought his family here in 1816 and built on the property which is now the old city cemetery. In 1820, he received a land grant for the ground he had homesteaded in the area called Mule Crossing.

The son of James Shields, Captain Meedy W. Shields, who later became a State Senator, inherited his father's land holdings and developed it into a prosperous farm. During the latter 1840's, a north-south railroad connecting the Ohio River at Jeffersonville with Indianapolis was built crossing the Shields' farm. In 1852, an east-west railroad was being surveyed through Jackson County and Shields persuaded the railroad company to run through his property. In exchange for this favor, he agreed to name the town after the railroad's civil engineer, J. Seymour. Seymour, Indiana quickly became a major center of commercial activity. The city was incorporated in 1864 with a population of 1553.