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2 - 7 October 1865
The invitation: Once, and only once in the record found, the fair that came to Fort Wayne was the state's. The Thirteenth Indiana State Fair was held here from Monday 2 October to Saturday 7 October 1865, on grounds which now form a portion of Lawton Park, the city's new north side park, bought in the January of the year before. The exhibition came in response to an invitation from the Allen County Horticultural Society, supported by liberal financial contributions from citizens. In conjunction, the Indiana Pomological Society held its sessions and drew to Fort Wayne some of America's leading fruit growers.
The build: Several large, barn-like buildings were erected for the displays. For convenience a pontoon bridge was built across the St. Marys River to connect the grounds with the town, and a swampy section of the fair grounds was converted into a small lake from the center of which spouted a fountain fed from the waters of the feeder canal. The leading local promoters the record names are I. D. G. Nelson, a leader in horticulture; Robert S. Taylor, who had charge of Fine Arts hall; and Henry J. Rudisill, superintendent of the Floral hall.
The numbers: Griswold's Pictorial History, the source this account follows, prints the fair's arithmetic whole: the gates registered 2,100 admissions, and the total receipts from all sources amounted to $14,000, which figure was far in excess of the expenditures for premiums and all other financial obligations. A fair that ends in surplus in a city of less than 20,000 inhabitants, six months after a civil war, is a civic proof, and Fort Wayne printed it as one. These numbers belong to the state fair alone; this section borrows none of them for the county fair, whose own early figures no source supplies.
Sources:
- Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, "1865 Indiana State Fair Fort Wayne, Indiana" (the dates, the Lawton Park grounds and the 1864 purchase, the promoters and their halls, the Pomological Society sessions), reproducing Griswold, The Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Indiana (1917), p. 472 (the Horticultural Society invitation, the buildings, the pontoon bridge, the lake and fountain, the 2,100 admissions and the $14,000 receipts).
- Riverfront Fort Wayne, official history (the 1865 state fair on the north bank of the St. Marys in Lawton Park).