Daniel Grass

Daniel Grass. The following is a selection from a biography of Daniel Grass by his great granddaughter, Miss Laura Wright. Written for Southwestern Indiana Historical Society, date unknown., Daniel Grass was two and a half years old when his father was killed and the rest of his family taken captives. Dr. William R. Hynes took the child and educated him as his own son., Daniel married Jane Smithers of Yellow Banks now Owensboro, Kentucky. Her father William Smithers was the first settler of Yellow Banks., Daniel came to Hanging Rock as the Indians called it now Rockport, in 1803 to look after entering land for Dr. William R. Hynes. On May 9, 1807 Daniel Grass entered land on Section 26 southwest of Rockport. He was the second man to take a land-grant in Spencer County but had the first land grant entered by an actual settler of what is now Rockport., In 1812, Daniel's political life began as Justice of the Peace. In 1813 he was an Associate Judge for Warrick County; more than half of what is now Spencer County was then in Warrick County., On the 5th of January 1816, a bill was reported to the United States House of Representatives to enable the people of the Indiana Territory to form a constitution. Daniel Grass was elected a delegate to this Constitutional Convention at Corydon, the capital, to represent Warrick County. On August 1816, Daniel Grass was elected a Senator in the first Indiana State Legislature from Warrick, Perry, and Posey Counties., Through the influence of Judge Grass, Spencer County was organized by an act of the Legislature in 1817-1818. It was Grass who had the county named Spencer, in honor of Captain Spier Spencer, his very warm friend who was killed at Tippecanoe on November 7, 1811. He also caused the county seat to be at Rockport. In 1818 Judge Grass was elected representative from Spencer, Dubois, and Warrick Counties. In 1822, he was again elected to the State Senate from Spencer, Dubois, and part of Warrick, and he served until 1826. Daniel Grass was appointed treasurer of Spencer County in 1818, but he never served. In the same year, he was appointed County Agent. All the early deeds show Grass agent of Spencer County as grantor., Grass was sheriff of Spencer County from 1833 to 1836. It was in this year he died from a stroke of apoplexy, being found dead in his chair by his wife. Judge Grass had been unable to lie down for some time. He had a chair made for him in which he rested at night., His remains were laid to rest on the hillside of what is known as the Old Grave Yard, not far from the hill on which he first settled.