Yorktown, Indiana - Yorktown got its place on the map when on November 5, 1836, Oliver H. Smith, "the proprietor of the within town," filed his plat of a townsite there at the mouth of Buck creek on White river in the northwest quarter of section 22 of township 20, range 9 (Mt. Pleasant), the river forming the north boundary line of the plat. In the original plat the first street at the north is Canal street, the proprietor at that time having entertained high hopes of a canal coming along there, with his townsite as a logical port on the expected waterway. Smith and High streets are the other east and west streets in the original plat, the north and south streets being, from the east, Elm, Broadway, Walnut, Market, Pine, Plum and West. In the center of this plat a quarter of a square (south-west corner of Smith and Market streets) was set apart as a market place. Four lots on the south edge of the plat were "reserved as special donations for religious purposes."The original plat carried 104 lots. In the next spring, May 26, 1837, the proprietor made an addition to his plat, carrying from lot 105 to lot 108, this extending the western limits of the town by the extent of two lots on the west and adding Arch and South streets on the south, with a tract of one and one-half acres donated at the southwest corner of the plat for a graveyard. At the northeast corner of this addition, corner of Elm and Arch streets, a quarter square was reserved "for the use of a seminary of learning." This Yorktown site was a part of the north half of the Cassman Indian reservation lands which Samuel Cassman (Cosman) and his wife Thirza had on August 30, 1830, sold to Goldsmith Gilbert, who meanwhile had bought the Hackley Indian reserve at the site of the old Munsee town, as is narrated elsewhere. On October 9, 1836, Gilbert sold this half section of the Cassman reserve to Oliver H. Smith, who immediately proceeded to lay out his townsite. According to the deed record, Gilbert paid Cassman $500 for the tract and sold it to Smith for $1,500, thus clearing $1,000 on his less than six years of possession. Smith, who was perhaps the most diligent "boomer" of Delaware county lands in the days when things were getting a good start here and who became a large landowner here, had high hopes of the development of his town of Yorktown and his promotion plans contemplated making of it a better town than the county seat, but the central location of the latter and the advantage which accrued to it as a county town were factors in favor of Muncie which he could not overcome. Smith, who afterward became a United States senator from Indiana, exerted a powerful influence in securing the survey of the first railroad through this county and through his town of Yorktown (old Indianapolis & Bellefontaine, now the "Big Four" road) and was made first president of that road, but even this added prestige could do little toward overcoming the natural disadvantages under which his town labored and he died knowing it never could become a city, Muncie and Anderson by that time having acquired advantages and a status which left no room for a city to grow up between them, only six miles away from the first named county seat.
(Source: History of Delaware County, Indiana, Frank D. Haimbaugh, Vol 1, 1924, pages 401/2)

Youngs, H. H. - see William F. Anderson