A History of Clay Co. IN

The following is the opening paragraph from a History of Clay Co., Indiana, Vol. 1, authored by William Travis, and published in 1909. It appears on a Rootsweb site and maintained by the Indiana GenWeb Project. This particular page is about Saline City and mentions an Edward Coffey.

Saline City, a town in Sugar Ridge township, at the junction of the main line of the Evansville & Indianapolis Railroad with the Brazil Branch, founded by Henry Jamison in 1870. When first laid out this town was named only Saline, but at the September term of Commissioners' Court, 1872, on petition of the proprietor, the record was changed so as to make it read “Saline City.” To the uninitiated the name of this place is misleading. On the train from Terre Haute out to Clay City, a good many years ago, were two strangers, seated side by side, one of whom, when the name of this station was called, looking out of the window, inquired of the outsiders, “Where are the salt works ?“ Though disappointed in not seeing the “works,” the stranger was right in his deduction from the call he had heard. On the hillside just south of the town site was a salt-lick in pioneer times, so much frequented by deer that their constant licking lapped out and undermined a large oak tree, so that the winds blew it down. From this circumstance the town was given a name suggestive of salt. The site of this town is historic ground, standing on the east side border of the Birch Creek Reservoir,or canal feeder, which the people in that part of the country were just as much determined to abate as the canal trustees were determined to maintain it. Here, within a few rods of the site of the E.&I. Railroad station, were encamped in the summer of 1855, the two companies of Indiana Militia, under command of Colonel Dodd, sent out by Governor Wright to protect the canal property.

This link will take you to the remainder of the above while this link will take you to the Clay Co., IN GenWeb site.