Fort Wayne Gas Light Company — dissolution and the line to NIPSCO

1853 – the company's line runs to Northern Indiana Public Service Company (the Businesses section carries the 1853 founding)

Course: The Fort Wayne Gas Light Company was franchised in 1853 and incorporated in 1855 to light private residences; it won the street-lighting contract in 1857. The manufactured-gas era it belonged to ended with the coming of natural gas: the company was dissolved in 1886. In the 1880s the Salamonie Mining and Gas Company, with Robert Bell as president, was supplying natural gas, and by 1905 a new Fort Wayne Gas Company had been formed to import natural gas into the city.

The consolidation link: The History Center's account of the gas-light era states the link directly: the 1905 Fort Wayne Gas Company "was the predecessor to Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), which provides Fort Wayne's present-day gas needs." Corporate histories of NIPSCO likewise trace the company's origins to the Fort Wayne Gas Light Company of 1853, and give the modern form of the chain: Samuel Insull's Midland Utilities acquired Northern Indiana Gas in 1923, and in 1926 the Calumet Electric Company renamed itself Northern Indiana Public Service Company and merged with Northern Indiana Gas. The wider chain: Northern Indiana Gas and Electric had been formed in 1909 and acquired the South Bend Gas Light Company in 1910; the Calumet Electric Company was incorporated in 1912 — the date NIPSCO itself uses as its founding; the parent became NIPSCO Industries in 1987 and NiSource in 1999; and NIPSCO counts the Fort Wayne Gas Light Co. of 1853, serving some 4,300 people, as its earliest forerunner. The exact instrument and date by which the 1905 Fort Wayne Gas Company passed into the Northern Indiana Gas line is not pinned in the sources found, and it is not stated more precisely here.

Sources:

1. Tom Castaldi, "Under the Gas Lights," History Center Notes & Queries, from Fort Wayne Magazine, April 2005 — franchising, incorporation, street contract, the 1886 dissolution, Salamonie Mining and Gas, the 1905 company and its NIPSCO succession.
2. NIPSCO corporate histories (FundingUniverse / company-histories.com summaries) — the 1853 origin, the 1923 Midland Utilities acquisition and the 1926 reorganisation.