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Mysteries · The Open Questions of the Record
Most of this history is a record of things that can be proven. This section is the opposite shelf: the questions the record itself leaves open. A mystery, as the word is used here, is not a rumor. It is a documented case — a fort the archaeologists have looked for and not found, a grave that was lost for a hundred years and found scattered, a fire whose origin no account explains, a church archive that burned and took the names with it. Each entry below states what is known, states what is not known, and marks where the trail ends. Where a famous mystery has since been solved, the solution is printed with it, because a solved mystery is a complete entry. Unsolved crimes have their own section of this record and are not retold here; neither are the tales graded in the folklore and claims sections — the buried silver, the tunnels, the question of where Johnny Appleseed lies. Those are pointed to, once, and left where they belong.
The two forts the spades cannot find
1722 AND 1794 · UNLOCATED
The markers know; the archaeologists do not: Five forts stood within a square mile of the center of present Fort Wayne, and the two that matter most to the city's founding have never been found in the ground. The French built…
The grave that was lost for a hundred years — and found scattered
1812–1912 · FOUND, IN PART
Little Turtle died on July 14, 1812, and was buried in a family burial ground near Spy Run Creek. The grave was unmarked, and within a few generations the city had forgotten where it lay. What is known of its recovery comes from…
The portrait that burned: what Little Turtle looked like
1797–1814 · A LOSS WITH A KNOWN CAUSE
Every picture of Little Turtle descends from a painting that no longer exists. On his visit to President Washington at Philadelphia in 1797, Little Turtle sat, at Washington's arrangement, to Gilbert Stuart, the painter of…
The Old Apple Tree, which no one can place
BEFORE 1761–1866 · SITE UNFIXED
A tree can be a landmark for a century and still be lost. At Kekionga, west of the St. Joseph River, stood an apple tree of extraordinary size — its trunk said to measure twelve feet around — beneath which, tradition holds…
The first game: the ground professional baseball forgot
MAY 4, 1871 · FOUND, WITH A RESIDUE
The game is the best-attested fact in American baseball; its address was forgotten. On May 4, 1871, the Fort Wayne Kekiongas beat the Cleveland Forest Citys 2–0 at the Kekionga Ball Grounds — the first game of the National…
The Aveline fire: a cause no record names
MAY 3, 1908 · ORIGIN UNDETERMINED
Early on Sunday morning, May 3, 1908, the Aveline House, Francis Aveline's great brick hotel at the southeast corner of Calhoun and Berry streets, burned to a shell. It was the largest hotel in the region when it was built in…
The records that burned: Turner Chapel's archive
1849–1979 · A DOCUMENTED LOSS
Some of Fort Wayne's open questions are open because the paper burned. Turner Chapel, the city's first Black congregation, was organized in 1849 — its trustees bought a lot that year on Jefferson Street between Hanna and Francis…
The archive of the open
THE KEEPERS' OWN LIST
The surest evidence that these questions are real is that the institutions charged with answering them keep saying so. The archaeologists who went looking for the city's founding forts closed their report by calling their work…