The American Red Cross in Allen County

Chartered 22 January 1917 — the war-work chapter

Founding: The Allen County chapter dates itself to the First World War: on 22 January 1917 a letter reached the Allen County Chapter House formally decreeing it a chapter of the American Red Cross — months before the United States entered the war. The History Center's own summary is the same: "Our local Red Cross chapter was founded during World War I."

The war work: The chapter wrote its own record immediately: Isabelle H. Taylor's War Work of the Fort Wayne Chapter of the American Red Cross (1919) is the chapter's contemporary account. The scale of the mobilization shows in the nursing record: 79 nurses from Fort Wayne and the surrounding area served stateside and overseas with the Red Cross during the war, and Irene Byron — the tuberculosis nurse for whom the Byron hospital line is named (see the poor-farm entry) — was Fort Wayne's first nurse to die in service, at Camp McArthur, Texas, in Peggy Seigel's researched account in the Indiana Magazine of History.

Today: The local unit is the Northeast Chapter of the American Red Cross's Indiana Region, part of a region-wide structure whose blood-services territory covers 24 Indiana and seven Ohio counties.

Sources:

1. ACGSI timeline, citing the chapter's history — the 22 January 1917 charter letter.
2. The History Center (Fort Wayne), January 2025 — the chapter founded during World War I.
3. Isabelle H. Taylor, War Work of the Fort Wayne Chapter of the American Red Cross (1919), via the Internet Archive.
4. Peggy Seigel, "Nurses in World War I: The 79 from Fort Wayne and Area Who Served," Indiana Magazine of History 115 (June 2019) — the 79 nurses; Irene Byron.
5. American Red Cross Indiana Region — the Northeast Chapter and its blood-services territory.