Samuel D. Maxwell

(Feb. 19, 1803-July 3, 1873). Born in 1820 in Garrard County, Kentucky, of Scottish ancestry, Samuel D. Maxwell moved with his family from Hanover, Indiana, to Marion County, locating close to Fall Creek near present-day Indiana Avenue. Only George Pogue and the John Mccormick family were then residents in or near what would become Indianapolis.

In 1822, Maxwell moved to Montgomery County (not yet organized) and married that December with the first marriage license issued in Marion County. He was appointed sheriff of Montgomery County in April 1823. He moved to Clinton County, where he was the first county clerk, in 1830. Returning to Indianapolis in 1854 or 1855, Maxwell practiced law and owned ice houses on the canal above 16^th  Street. In January 1857, he chaired the Marion County Republican convention. A lifelong Presbyterian, he was active in the work of the Indianapolis Benevolent Society and ward schools.

Maxwell won three mayoral elections: 1858, 1859 (elections were annual from 1853 to 1858), and 1861. During the Civil War, he presided over a city swollen with Union recruits and was a member of the United States Sanitary Commission. By 1863, his health had failed, and while certain of a fourth nomination for mayor, Maxwell gave up public life. After the war, he moved to Grand Gulf, Mississippi, returning to Indianapolis during his last illness around February 1873. This last of the first settlers had spent only a dozen of his 70 years in the city.

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