Seymour is a city in Jackson County, Indiana, United States. The population was 21,569 at the 2020 census, making it the largest city in Jackson County. It was platted in 1852 by landowner Meedy Shields and named after a railroad engineer.
Seymour developed as a railroad town after the north–south Jeffersonville Railroad and the east–west Ohio and Mississippi Railroad intersected in the early 1850s, leading to the city to be nicknamed the "Crossroads of Southern Indiana." In October 1866, the local Reno Gang carried out what is considered to be the first peacetime train robbery in the United States—an episode that brought vigilante reprisals and lasting notoriety. During World War II the U.S. Army Air Forces operated Freeman Army Airfield southwest of the city, a training base later known for the 1945 Freeman Field mutiny, a milestone in the desegregation of the U.S. military.
The modern economy is anchored by manufacturing and distribution led by the automotive-parts maker Aisin, which opened a Seymour plant in the 1980s. Beginning in the late 1980s, the city drew substantial immigration from San Sebastián Coatán, Guatemala. Its Hispanic population grew rapidly in the early 21st century, reshaping the community and drawing state scrutiny of the city's policing policies in 2024. Seymour is the hometown of rock musician John Mellencamp and holds an annual Oktoberfest reflecting its 19th-century German heritage.
History
19th century The land around Seymour was inhabited by the Lenape (Delaware), who had been displaced westward from the Delaware River valley. The 1805 Treaty of Grouseland opened the area to white settlement. After the 1812 Pigeon Roost massacre, the Battle of Tipton's Island took place, where Major John Tipton and some thirty men overcame a larger party of Native raiders. Native Americans killed fifteen settlers between 1811 and 1815, and by 1816—the year Indiana attained statehood—only five families remained in the area. In 1817 the state built a blockhouse to trade with the Lenape until they ceded the land under the 1818 Treaty of St. Mary's, after which the county saw significant depopulation between 1822 and 1832.
The first settler on the land that became Seymour was James Shields, who arrived with his family in 1816 and built on the property that is now the old city cemetery. In 1820, Shields received a land patent for his homestead. His son, Captain Meedy W. Shields, inherited the land and developed it into a prosperous farm. The site later became known as "Mule Crossing": according to an 1881 account, the first shipment of goods sent over the newly completed railroad was marked "Mule Crossing" because Shields kept a great many mules that gave the railroad's engineers trouble, and the engineers bestowed the name on the place.
Meedy Shields and his wife, platted Seymour on April 27, 1852, near the 1809 Indian treaty corner. A north–south railroad linking the Ohio River at Jeffersonville to Indianapolis had been built across the Shields farm in the late 1840s. When the east–west Ohio and Mississippi Railroad was surveyed through the county in 1852, Shields persuaded it to cross the first line on his land and, in return, agreed to name the town for the railroad's civil engineer. The earliest county history, published in 1886, identifies him only as "the chief contractor and civil engineer, Mr. Seymour," who was the superintendent over the construction of the Ohio and Mississippi Railway from North Vernon to St. Louis. Later accounts name him Hezekiah C. Seymour, while others instead credit a surveyor named J. Seymour. Hezekiah C. Seymour, formerly state engineer and surveyor of New York and superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad, had become a principal contractor of the Ohio and Mississippi in the spring of 1852, when he took up railroad construction contracts exceeding $35 million. Seymour's first newspaper, the Seymour Times, was established in 1857 by Dr. Jasper R. Monroe, who brought the paper from Rockford. The Times was published as a Republican paper.
The Civil War Seymour was an important waypoint for the movement of men and supplies during the war due to the rail lines connecting with larger cities such as Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis. Despite southern Indiana's strong Copperhead political sentiment, the city of Seymour and the surrounding area raised three separate infantry units for service in the Union Army. Volunteers were organized at Camp Heffren in Seymour. These included the 50th Indiana Infantry Regiment, commanded by former Indiana Secretary of State Colonel Cyrus L. Dunham, as well as Company C of the 10th Indiana Cavalry Regiment. The 50th Indiana was present at the Battle of Parker's Crossroads against Nathan Bedford Forrest, as was the 10th Indiana Cavalry in skirmishes near Pulaski and during the 1864 Nashville Campaign. Company H of the 6th Indiana Infantry Regiment was also raised in Seymour and commanded by Captain Fielder A. Jones. These men fought at Shiloh (2nd Day), Stones River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and through the Atlanta Campaign, ending in the capture of that city.
The area's divided politics produced a notable incident on September 5, 1862, when Jason B. Brown—a Brownstown lawyer, Democrat, and later a three-term U.S. representative from the district—delivered a speech at Seymour after which a recruiting officer of the 15th Indiana Volunteers filed a charge with the state adjutant general accusing him of using "treasonable language" in public against the government. Brown was taken to Indianapolis, where the deputy United States marshal declined to entertain the charge, and it was dismissed without trial; the Democratic press presented the arrest as part of an effort to intimidate Democratic voters before the fall election. Elected to the Indiana House of Representatives the following month, Brown offered the resolutions creating the House's select Committee on Arbitrary Arrests in January 1863 and led its investigation.
Captain Fielder A. Jones, was wounded early in the war and later raised an additional company of Jackson County men, who elected him colonel. By 1865 he had transferred to the 8th Indiana Cavalry and had been promoted to colonel, shortly before being brevetted to brigadier general. After his discharge, he moved to Missouri to practice law.
On July 10, 1863, as Confederate Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan and his cavalry sacked nearby Salem, Major General John Love of the Indiana Legion (militia) arrived in Seymour from New Albany to take command of the city defenses. Over the next day, Love used Seymour as a staging ground to gather a force to repel Morgan's next attack, which they believed would target the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad at Mitchell, Seymour, or Vernon. His force included elements of the 63rd Indiana and 69th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiments, the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters, the 15th Indiana (Von Sehlen's) Battery of Light Artillery, and a few Indiana Legion militia units. As Morgan moved on Vernon on July 11, Love took his force of about 1,000 men to meet him, placing Captain Meedy Shields in charge of the Seymour defenses in his absence. Shields, who had organized and trained many local mounted militia units, in Love's words "rendered invaluable service" during the Morgan's Raid crisis.
Six officers escaped on January 20, 1864, during a transfer of Confederate prisoners of war. One was later recaptured in town.The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, Ohio), January 20, 1864, p. 2. The New York Times reported that on January 22, 1864, a "soldiers' riot" took place, in which two soldiers were killed and several others were injured.The New York Times (New York), January 22, 1864, p. 1.
During the war, the 50th Indiana Infantry lost 3 officers and 54 enlisted men due to being killed or mortally wounded, and 3 officers and 158 enlisted men to disease, for a total of 218 dead. Colonel Dunham, a Democrat, faced wartime accusations of disloyalty and was criticized for his conduct at the September 1862 surrender of Munfordville, Kentucky. He left the regiment in 1863. Lieutenant Colonel Horace Heffren resigned in September 1862 and was replaced by Major Samuel T. Wells—a Vallonia native and former sheriff of Jackson County (1846–1847). Wells commanded the regiment after Dunham's departure until the 50th was consolidated into the 52nd Indiana Infantry Regiment, through the war's end.
During the Civil War, Seymour and Jackson County fielded a total of 2,571 volunteers for the Union cause.
The Reno era
The Rader House is described in early county histories as one of Seymour's leading hotels. It became a haven for the Reno Gang during the mid-1860s and travelers who lodged there were frequently robbed.
In January 1866, Moore Woodmansee, a wealthy merchant from nearby Medora, stopped at the Rader House while traveling to Cincinnati to buy goods. He disappeared from his room. That October, his body—the head severed—was recovered from the East Fork of the White River. A hotel employee, Gordon Kinney, was suspected and was shot dead during the investigation. The proprietor, Captain George Rader, was arrested but acquitted. The killing was considered unsolved until 1872, when a dying man named Reuben Wheeler confessed that two men had used Rader's wagon to dispose of the body on the night of the murder.The Tribune (Seymour, Indiana), October 2, 1991, p. 13.
After the war, local veterans organized the Ellsworth Post 20 of the G.A.R. At its peak, the post included two hundred and twenty-two local citizens who had served the Union during the war as members. The Ellsworth Post was active in local charities, organized burial services for local veterans, and conducted official observances on Decoration Day. The final member of the post, James H Boak, lived to be 98 years old. He died in 1942, closing one of the longest-running G.A.R. chapters.The Tribune (Seymour, Indiana) · December 28, 1942, Mon · p. 6, Downloaded on February 14, 2022
A robbery of the Adams Express Car on the east-west Ohio and Mississippi line near Brownstown was reported in July 1866. That night, the perpetrators were chased by a local vigilance committee of 300 men that continued into the Rockford area. Three days later, the Reno brothers had been identified as the gang's leaders and newspapers were recounting the family's crimes.The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, Ohio) · July 23, 1868, Thu · p. 8, Downloaded on February 11, 2022 On October 6, 1866, the local Reno Gang robbed an Ohio and Mississippi Railroad train. The holdup is often described as the first robbery of a moving train in the United States during peacetime.The Tribune (Seymour, Indiana) · July 29, 1952, Tue · p. 6, Downloaded on January 24, 2022 The 1886 county history records that the gang boarded the train a short distance east of Seymour, rifled one safe of about $15,000, and rolled a second safe holding roughly $30,000 from the moving car. The second safe and its contents were recovered intact after the robbers were pursued. Some members of the gang were later lynched at Hangman's Crossing outside town.
The gang struck again in May 1868, stopping a train at Marshfield, in Scott County, cutting it in two and running the looted express car to within sight of Seymour. An early county historian, H. M. Beadle, described the years from 1863 to 1868 in Jackson County as "a perfect carnival of crime". In response, citizens masked in red organized a vigilance committee that carried out the lynchings of suspected gang members.
On September 28, 1867, a second train was held up near the same location. Initially blamed on the Renos, the copycat robbery was the work of two local men, Walker Hammond and Michael Colleran, who escaped with as much as $8,000. John Reno tracked Hammond down, beat him, and turned him over to the sheriff. Hammond and Colleran were indicted in February 1868.