Christopher Harrison

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Christopher Harrison (c. 1780–1868) was the first lieutenant governor of Indiana. He served with Governor Jonathan Jennings from November 7, 1816, to December 17, 1818. When Jennings left to negotiate with Native American tribes in northern Indiana, Harrison acted as governor. He later clashed with Jennings over who should hold the office, seized the state seal, and tried to run the government from his own position. After a brief legislative dispute, the impeachment failed and Harrison resigned.

Harrison was born in Cambridge, Maryland, around 1780, to wealthy landowners Colonel Robert Harrison and Milcah Gale. He studied at St. John’s College in Annapolis and worked as a clerk for a Baltimore banker, William Patterson. He moved to Indiana around 1808, living for a time as a hermit near Hanover. He helped start the Farmers and Mechanics Bank in Madison and later ran a dry goods business in Salem. He also served as a judge in the Indiana Territory.

In 1819 he ran for governor but lost to Jennings. He helped plan Indianapolis in 1821 and was the only commissioner to arrive on time to mark the site, choosing Alexander Ralston to survey it. In 1824 he served on a commission studying a canal around the Falls of the Ohio, though Indiana did not build it. He then lived in Salem as a quiet painter, creating portraits of early Hoosiers, some of which are in the Indiana State Library and Indiana State Museum.

In 1834 he returned to Maryland after his father’s death, inherited the family plantation, and freed all the slaves there. He joined the Quaker church in the 1840s. Harrison died in Talbot County, Maryland, in 1868 at about age 88. He never married. There is no known relation between him and William Henry Harrison.