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1834–1863 · THE POLICE IN BRIEF
The marshal's town: For its first decades Fort Wayne was kept by the sheriff, the constables and the city marshal — an elected town officer from 1830 whose succession, with the police chiefs' after 1863, is carried in the Government section and is not repeated here. What belongs to this section is the force the marshal's town grew underneath him.
The first night watch, 1834: In June 1834 the town trustees ordained a watch of "at least four judicious men," to guard the town "from the ravages of fire and to prevent disorderly conduct within said corporation" — the fire watch and the police watch were the same four men. Half stood from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., relieved by the marshal, and the other half from 1 to 4 a.m.; among the first watchmen were William H. Wallace, William Brown and William Cushman. The watchmen were to stop all persons on the streets after 10 o'clock and, absent a reasonable excuse, lodge them in the lockup, a fine of $3 awaiting the culprit in the morning.
Paid night policemen, 1853: In December 1853 the council appointed four men — John Hardendorff, Patrick McGee, John D. McGrady and Alexander Wiley (succeeded by Henry Klinger) — to serve as policemen at $1.50 per night. All were discharged the following year, and a reorganization brought James Wall, Hardendorff and McGee back under Jacob Lewis as captain; William McKinley served as captain of the watch, with Barney Hutker and Milton Henry among the force of the period.
The force of 1863: "The year 1863 brought to Fort Wayne its first regularly organized police force": the council named Conrad Pens "captain of the night watch," with John Sullivan, John Phillabaum and William Shopman as patrolmen, to serve "from twilight to daybreak," in the wartime spring when the council acted in May of that year. The first police station stood on Court street, opposite the courthouse — three iron cages on the main floor, upper rooms for female law violators. The Sentinel blessed the step: it trusted the police would "render it safe for pedestrians to perambulate the streets once more without providing themselves with arms and bludgeons." A News-Sentinel Cityscapes line dates a "first police force" to 1841; Griswold's account, taken from the council's own proceedings, gives 1863 for the first regularly organized force, and the difference is carried unresolved in both this record and the Government section's telling. Pens's successors and the station's later moves belong to the Government section.
Sources:
- Griswold, Pictorial History (1917), Ch. XXV, "The First Nightwatch" (the 1834 ordinance, the 1853 appointments), and Ch. XXXVIII, "The First Police Force" (the 1863 organization and the Court street station).
- The Government section of this record — the marshal's office from 1830, the chiefs' succession from the 1889 Valley of the Upper Maumee River, and the Cityscapes 1841 dating carried there.