Editing Leavenworth, Indiana (section)

=== Foundation and early settlement ===
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Leavenworth was laid out in 1818 in a horseshoe shaped bend of the [[Ohio River]], directly under a large bluff called Mt. Eden.  The bluff forms part of the [[Indiana Ridge]] and faces directly across the river toward [[Kentucky]].  "Old Leavenworth" (the original town, now practically abandoned) was almost completely wiped out by the huge [[Ohio River flood of 1937|1937 Ohio River flood]], as it was built directly on the floodplain.

The town was founded by [[Zebulon Leavenworth]] and his brother Seth, natives of [[Connecticut]].

In 1824, a wood yard was established in the town to provide fuel to steamboats, and David Lyon had a boatbuilding industry here in 1830.  The Whitcomb brickyard was also a flourishing industry.
[[File:Horseshoe bend in Ohio River.jpg|thumb|Horseshoe Bend in Ohio River, visible from Leavenworth]]
''The Crisis'', Crawford County’s first newspaper, was begun in Leavenworth in 1839.

In 1835, Zebulon started a stage line from Leavenworth to the new state capitol in [[Indianapolis]], a route intended primarily for students going to the new State College in [[Bloomington, Indiana|Bloomington]] (later [[Indiana University]]) and for boatmen returning from downriver.

Riverboat men returning from [[New Orleans]] were thought to be carriers of the [[yellow fever]] and [[cholera]] epidemics that often devastated the [[Ohio Valley]] frontier.  Seth Leavenworth advocated the construction of a marine hospital for the purpose of quarantine and medical treatment, which he hoped to build somewhere near the town of Leavenworth.  The bill he put before the Indiana legislature was never enacted.<ref name="indhistory">H.H. Pleasant, "Crawford County," ''Indiana Magazine of History'', Vol. XVIII No. 2 (1922): 154-163.</ref>

In 1843, Leavenworth supplanted [[Fredonia, Indiana|Fredonia]] as the county seat.  Leavenworth remained the county seat until 1896, when the county records were stolen by a mob in a notorious armed “courthouse war" against the town of [[English, Indiana|English]].

Seth Leavenworth eventually left Indiana and moved to [[Missouri]], where he died in 1854.  His son Zebulon, named after the boy's uncle in Indiana, became a famous riverboat pilot on the [[Mississippi River]] and was a friend of [[Mark Twain]] before Twain became a writer.  Together, they piloted the steamboat ''Nebraska'' past [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]] at the outbreak of the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], receiving gunshots across their bow as a warning to halt.