The first names · Black residents of the fort era

1794 – 1820s

The presence precedes the town: Dodie Marie Miller's African Americans in Fort Wayne: The First 200 Years, the community's own published history, begins its story in 1794, the year of the American fort, on evidence pointing to a Black inhabitant from the start. The first Black man known by name to have lived in Fort Wayne is Philip Framan, who worked for an army contractor in 1797, perhaps as a baker. Black trappers worked the wilderness trade, and Black people are known to have lived among the Miami at Kekionga. Miller's account identifies the first known free Black resident of the area in 1809. The scholarly baseline for these years is J. Randolph Kirby's pair of studies in the historical society's Old Fort News — "The Appearance of Blacks in Fort Wayne before 1820" and "Notes on the Emergence of a Black Community in Fort Wayne, Indiana between 1820 and 1850" — on which the Indiana Historical Society's county survey of early Black settlements also rests. The record of these decades is necessarily thin: the people in it appear in contractors' accounts, fort returns and later recollection rather than in records of their own making, and this entry states the names the record gives and no more.

Sources:

1. Tom Castaldi, "Fort Wayne's early African-American settlers blazed a trail that burns bright today," History Center Notes & Queries (from Fort Wayne Magazine, January/February 2004) — Philip Framan, 1797; Black trappers and residents among the Miami.
2. Dodie Marie Miller, African Americans in Fort Wayne: The First 200 Years (Arcadia Publishing) — the 1794 starting point and the first known free Black resident, identified in 1809, as the publisher's account of the book states them.
3. J. Randolph Kirby, "The Appearance of Blacks in Fort Wayne before 1820," Old Fort News 48, and "Notes on the Emergence of a Black Community in Fort Wayne, Indiana between 1820 and 1850," Old Fort News 54 — as cited in the Indiana Historical Society's "Early Black Settlements by County" (Allen County).
4. The History Center, "Fabric of the Fort" (February 2022) — the first documented Black residents came with the American forts as slaves, servants, soldiers and laborers.