City of Seymour Indiana

The first settler on what is now Seymour was James Shields, who brought
his family to the region in 1816 and built a block house on the
property -- now the old city cemetery. In 1820, he received a land
grant for the ground he had homesteaded in the area called Mule
Crossing. His son, Captain Meedy W. Shields, inherited his father's
landholdings and, during the latter 1840s, a north-south railroad
connecting the Ohio River at Jeffersonville with Indianapolis was built
crossing their farm. In 1852, an east-west railroad was being surveyed
through Jackson County; Shields persuaded the railroad company to run
through his property instead of through neighboring Rockford. In
exchange for this favor, he provided the right-of-way for the new
railroad and agreed to name the town after the railroad's civil
engineer, J. Seymour.

Still unsatisfied with the railroad business, Captain Shields (by then a
state senator) secured the passage of a bill requiring all trains to
stop at all railroad intersections. Two railroads met at Seymour, and
because they were required to stop, exchanged freight and passengers,
hence Seymour quickly became a major center of commercial activity. The
city was incorporated in 1864 with a population of 1,553.

The railroad figures into another chapter of Seymour's history as the
site of the world's first train robbery. In 1866, the Reno Gang (headed
by brothers Frank, Simeon, and William) boarded the train east of town
and proceeded to throw the trainmen off and rob the baggage car at
their leisure as they sped through Seymour. Using the deserted town of
Rockford as their hideout, the gang marauded across five states until
vigilantes brought an end to their short but infamous career. The
secret of the gang's missing loot lies buried with Reno brothers in
unmarked graves in the old Seymour Cemetery.