Background
Williamson Dunn was born on December 25, 1781 near Crow’s Station, not far from Danville, Kentucky, United States. His parents were Samuel Dunn, a soldier in Dunmore’s War and in the Revolution, and Eleanor Brewster.
Williamson Dunn was born on December 25, 1781 near Crow’s Station, not far from Danville, Kentucky, United States. His parents were Samuel Dunn, a soldier in Dunmore’s War and in the Revolution, and Eleanor Brewster.
In 1811 Dunn was made by Governor Harrison justice of the peace and judge of the court of common pleas of Jefferson County. Soon after the outbreak of the War of 1812, President Madison commissioned him a captain of rangers, and the next year he participated in raids upon hostile Indian towns along the White and Wabash rivers.
Later that year he took command of Fort Harrison near Terre Haute.
Retiring from the army before the end of the war, he served for a time as associate judge of the circuit court of Jefferson County.
Upon the admission of Indiana to statehood in 1816, he was elected a member of the state House of Representatives and was thrice returned to that body.
In the third and fourth legislatures he was speaker of the House.
In 1820 he was commissioned register of the land office for the Terre Haute district and three years later removed to Crawfordsville, which town he helped to lay out.
He held the office until 1829, when he returned to Hanover.
In 1837 he was chosen on the Whig ticket to fill a vacancy in the state Senate, and in 1846 was elected probate judge of Jefferson County and was subsequently reelected.
He donated fifty acres of land to help establish the academy which became Hanover College, and, later, he gave the ground at Crawfordsville on which Wabash College was erected. One of his sons, William McKee Dunn, became judge-advocate general of the United States army.
Of his family a writer on the early history of Indiana says that no other “equalled the Dunns in bravery and soldierly qualities. ”
They were often called “the fighting Dunns, ” and were well worthy of the name.
Williamson Dunn suffered a sunstroke in September 1854, and died from its effects some weeks later.
Dunn was widely esteemed for his ability, probity, and public spirit.
In September 1806, Williamson Dunn married Miriam Wilson, and three years later the pair, with two young children, moved to southern Indiana and built the first house where the town of Hanover now stands.