Map - Owen County, Indiana (Owen County)

Owen County (Owen County)
Owen County is a county in the U.S. state of Indiana. In 1920 the United States Census Bureau calculated the mean center of U.S. population to fall within this county. As of the 2010 United States Census, it had a population of 21,575. Its county seat is Spencer.

Owen County is part of the Bloomington, Indiana, Metropolitan Statistical Area.

In 1787, the fledgling United States defined the Northwest Territory, which included the area of present-day Indiana. In 1800, Congress separated Ohio from the Northwest Territory, designating the rest of the land as the Indiana Territory. President Thomas Jefferson chose William Henry Harrison as the territory's first governor, and Vincennes was established as the territorial capital. After the Michigan Territory was separated and the Illinois Territory was formed, Indiana was reduced to its current size and geography. By December 1816 the Indiana Territory was admitted to the Union as a state.

Starting in 1794, Native American titles to Indiana lands were extinguished by usurpation, purchase, or war and treaty. The United States acquired land from the Native Americans in the 1809 treaty of Fort Wayne, and by the treaty of St. Mary's in 1818 considerably more territory became property of the government. This included the future Owen County. White settlers had been moving into the future Owen County area since 1816.

The area in present-day Owen County was first placed under local jurisdiction in 1790, when Knox County was created. This all-encompassing county was repeatedly subdivided as its lands were occupied − in 1816 a portion was partitioned to create Sullivan County, and on 2 February 1818 another area to the south was partitioned to create Daviess County. That same winter (21 December 1818) the state legislature took portions from northern Daviess and eastern Sullivan to create Owen County; it was named for Abraham Owen, a colonel in the US Army who had died at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. The boundaries of this new county were reduced in 1822 when Putnam and in 1825 when Clay counties were created.

The first moves to organize the county's government were completed in 1819. In 1820 the first commissioners selected Spencer, the county's largest settlement, as its seat of government.

In 1920, the United States Census reported Owen County as the Center of Population for the US at a point 8 miles south-southeast of Spencer, Indiana. The center moved the shortest distance since census data collecting began in 1790 (just under 10 miles) from its previous center in Bloomington, Indiana. When the East experienced high rates of growth, as it did in the decades between 1890 and 1920, the Westward movement of the center slowed.

 
Map - Owen County (Owen County)
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The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C., and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City.

Indigenous peoples have inhabited the Americas for thousands of years. Beginning in 1607, British colonization led to the establishment of the Thirteen Colonies in what is now the Eastern United States. They quarreled with the British Crown over taxation and political representation, leading to the American Revolution and proceeding Revolutionary War. The United States declared independence on July 4, 1776, becoming the first nation-state founded on Enlightenment principles of unalienable natural rights, consent of the governed, and liberal democracy. The country began expanding across North America, spanning the continent by 1848. Sectional division surrounding slavery in the Southern United States led to the secession of the Confederate States of America, which fought the remaining states of the Union during the American Civil War (1861–1865). With the Union's victory and preservation, slavery was abolished nationally by the Thirteenth Amendment.
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