John DePauw from Washington County, Charles Beggs of Franklin County, and W.H. Eades of Jennings County, were appointed to select a site for the new county seat by an act of the General Assembly on January 7, 1818. The first three Commissioners with a daily earning of three dollars settled on a hundred acre tract donated by John Paul of Madison. This hundred acre tract is known today as Jefferson County. The county seat was named Versailles in honor of DePauw’s native city in France and was laid out as a town of 186 lots by John Ritchie.

Ripley County, located in the southeastern part of Indiana, has 450 square miles or 288,000 acres. It is 27 miles north to south and 19 miles east to west with an elevation ranging from 600 feet to 100 feet above sea level. Laughery Creek, named for Colonel Archibold Lochry who fought in the Revolutionary War, flows through the county