Following is one of the Biographies and Stories which where gathered by Charles Sumner McKamy in the 1950s for publication in a Crawford County History Book. Unfortunately he passed away before the book was published.
Andrew L. Maxwell was the son of John and Ellen (Love) Maxwell, who came to Crawford County from Tennessee with their family, both natives of Tennessee and of Scotch-Irish descent. The family came to Crawford County 1849 with ox and horse drawn wagons. His Grandfather entered from the Government the land located in honey Creek Township, where he and his brother, Judge John C. Maxwell, and other children of the family, were reared and attended the District School. He attended the County Normal Schools and taught one term of District school, but preferred to farm, during the following fifteen years he operated the farm and conducted a saw mill and threshing machine business in Crawford County.
On March 20, 1880 he married Miss Nannie E. Seaney, a daughter of Samuel and Cinderilla (Kamplain) Seaney of Crawford County and to this union four children were born on the home farm where their Father was born, namely: Cora E., Mabel, Lena and Carl. All the children attended Grade School at Flat Rock where the family moved from the farm in 1891, after which he engaged in various lines of business until 1897, when he located in Lawrenceville and began the study of law and soon thereafter he purchased the "Lawrence County News", which he managed, besides looking after his Crawford County farm, which he had added acreage to until he owned over 400 acres, as well as other farms he acquired in Lawrence County, one of which contained over 1600 acres of rich Ambraw land that he owned at the time of his death. He was very successful in business and took advantage of the opportunity to secure oil and gas leases in Crawford and Lawrence Counties, that, with some of his own holdings proved to be good oil producers.
He never lived in Robinson but was very active in the affairs of the city and an active member of the Robinson Chamber of Commerce. He purchased property in the City and at one time, he with J.S. Abbott and Emerson Apple owned the only Ice plant in the city, his largest contribution to the city was a large modern fire proof two story business building which he used during his life time as a Garage and Salesroom, later his heirs sold the building to the Ohio Oil Company on S. Cross Street which has been remodeled and is now one of the show places of Robinson.
For several years he was the largest Ford and Hudson Distributor of these makes of Automobiles in this section of the country, owning and operating places in Lawrenceville, Evansville, Ind., Princeton, Vincennes, Oakland and Robinson, and having Dealers for Ford in eight places, with places and Dealers in 42 towns in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky for Hudson cars, at one time being the largest Distributors of Hudson cars in the United States, and at times did ship direct from the factory in Detroit Hudson cars by the train load, as many as forty five and fifty four train car loads at a time, shipments costing from $200,000 to $250,000, each and they came with Bill of lading attached and had to be paid before being unloaded.
Mr. Maxwell passed away on July 22, 1922 at his home in Lawrenceville, and Lawrence and Crawford Counties lost one of its best citizens, who was a very generous man with the poor and needy and he often said that when he gave to those who needed it, to the churches and other institution he believed that it was returned to him in profits in his business as his reward while on earth. He supported Foreign Missionaries from his church for several years, donated liberally to the Evansville College and the Oakland City College and other worthwhile institutions.
Through the courtesy of his daughter, Mrs. Cora E. Gore of Lawrenceville, she has supplied us with much of the above information we have given above, and the writer of this book acted as Private Secretary to Mr. Maxwell during the later part of his life and knew much about his life and can verify much of the above history as well as many of his close friends knew about the great loss we had when he passed away.