A Pact Made for Peace in Aurora in 1861

As we celebrate the country's 250 Birthday this year, we will feature the history of towns in Eagle Country. 

Hillforest. Photo by Cheryl Damon-Greiner.

(Aurora, Ind.) - On a high bluff overlooking the Ohio River stands a remarkable house that has watched nearly two centuries of Indiana history unfold. Hillforest Mansion has always been more than a beautiful landmark. For the town of Aurora, it has long been a witness to ambition, cooperation, civic pride, and one extraordinary historic moment when neighbors chose peace over war.

The story begins in the mid‑1800s with the Gaff family. Thomas Gaff and his brothers arrived in Aurora after financial hardship forced them to leave Philadelphia. What they found along the Ohio River was opportunity and they made the most of it. From distilleries and breweries to mills, farms, and a jewelry business, the Gaffs helped build an economy that supported families throughout southeastern Indiana.

The river was the lifeline that made it all possible. Thomas Gaff owned several steamboats and used them to move Aurora’s goods to distant markets. In 1855, the family’s success made it possible to build Hillforest Mansion, designed to resemble the very steamboats that powered the town’s prosperity. Sitting high on a hill, it symbolized confidence, growth, and the deep connection to river commerce and transportation.

Just across the river, and visible from Hillforest, lay Petersburg, Kentucky. Ferries crossed the water daily between the towns, with goods and mail, families and friends, employees and church members, gossip and news. For river towns like these, the Ohio River was not a boundary—it was a shared space.

Photo by Cheryl Damon-Greiner.

Then came 1861.

The nation edged toward civil war and fear settled heavily over river communities. People in Aurora and Petersburg understood what war could mean for them. The Ohio River was a prime transportation route for the armies that were forming and that could lead to raids along their riverbanks, destroyed property, broken livelihoods, and neighbors suddenly forced to choose sides. Kentucky’s neutral position and possible secession threatened not just the Union, but the networks of trust that had taken generations to build.

Rather than wait for events to overtake them, citizens on both sides of the river acted. Leaders and townspeople met, talked, and made a remarkable decision. They would not turn against one another. Whatever happened at the national level, they agreed that local relationships would endure.

That impulse for cooperation was not limited to Aurora and Petersburg alone. On February 16, 1861, citizens from Boone County, Kentucky, and Dearborn County, Indiana, gathered to hear appeals that Kentucky remain in the Union. They feared that secession would bring the war directly to their doorsteps with destruction, and danger to their brothers, sons, husbands and fathers. Steamboats owned by Thomas Gaff were already being eyed by Union generals.

The people created a written pact—formal in language but deeply personal in spirit—that declared non‑aggression and mutual protection of property and rights. Ninety-eight Indiana and Kentucky men signed their names, resolving “we do not intend in any event to permit anything to destroy this friendly feeling between us, to hereby agree to stand by each other for purposes of mutual protection and defense against lawless interference from any source whatever.”

Today, the story of that decision, often called the Petersburg Pact, is described on a historical marker on the corner of State Rt 56 and Third Street, on the river’s edge in Aurora, a few blocks from Hillforest. Remarkably, the Petersburg Pact is remembered by only a few. And research into historic archives, records and online sources will state that there is no known surviving written copy of the pact itself, no treaty text in state archives, no known newspaper reproduction (although the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote a feature story about it in 1936) and no formal government record. Even the marker suggests it was a local, informal agreement, likely recorded in oral tradition and community memory.

Original Petersburg Pact. Photo by Cheryl Damon-Greiner.

However, the Petersburg Pact does exist. The residents of Aurora and Petersburg resolved, with the Civil War looming, to stand together, to do no harm to one another and to remain friends. The original document, bearing the signatures of men from both sides of the river, is preserved in the archives at Hillforest and can be seen by visitors to the mansion during tours.

It is fitting that Hillforest, a symbol of growth and accomplishment, is the home of one of the region’s most remarkable historical documents. From the second-floor windows of Thomas Gaff’s home office where he managed his businesses, you can look across the Ohio River to Petersburg, Kentucky, a reminder of how closely the two communities have always been linked. The pact reminds us that the Civil War was not experienced only by armies and politicians, but by ordinary people striving to protect their families, livelihoods, and communities. In 1861, the people in two towns looked across the water—not as enemies, but as neighbors—and agreed that whatever the nation became, they would not turn against one another. That choice—made right here along Aurora’s riverfront—remains one of Indiana’s quiet, powerful stories of courage, community, and hope.