The First Ground — Old Fort Park and the Lawton Purchase, 1863–1866

The first piece of ground acquired for park purposes in Fort Wayne was fractional lot No. 40 of Taber's Addition — a little triangular spot of one-fifth of an acre, part of the ground enclosed within the historic old fort. Griswold's Pictorial History (1917) records the purchase from Harry Seymour for $800, and dates the acquiring of Old Fort Park to 1863; Henry M. Williams afterward enclosed the tract with an iron fence and erected a flagpole in it. The Parks Department's own published chronology tells the purchase slightly differently — "Old Fort Park, first city park, purchased by Mr. Henry Williams and given to city" — crediting Williams as the buyer who made the gift. The two accounts agree on the essentials: 1863, a fifth of an acre of the fort site, and Williams's hand in it. How the city came to hold the rest of the old fort grounds as they passed out of federal and private hands belongs to the Land chapter's record.

The second purchase was on a different scale entirely. On January 24, 1864, by Griswold's account, the city bought the major portion of the lands that now comprise Lawton Park from William Fleming, S. B. Bond, C. D. Bond, W. H. Jones, Hugh B. Reed, Henry J. Rudisill and J. W. Dawson for $35,500, with the balance of the tract bought in 1866 and 1881 from Mathias Mettler for a further $37,255. The tract was known first as City Park, then as North Side Park, and finally — in 1900, by the department's chronology — as Lawton Park, for General Henry W. Lawton, the Fort Wayne soldier killed in the Philippines. The department's chronology dates the Northside Park acquisition to 1866 and ties it to the Indiana State Fair, which Fort Wayne entertained on grounds forming part of the tract in October 1865; the two sources divide on whether 1864 or 1866 is the founding year, and the record as published supports Griswold's dated, priced 1864 purchase for the major portion. In 1872 the council gave twenty acres of the park's west portion to the Fort Wayne, Jackson and Saginaw (New York Central) railroad for a right-of-way and shops — an early sign that parkland would have to be defended as well as bought.

The council's first general action on park purchases came on the evening of November 14, 1865, when it resolved that the mayor and city attorney report whether the city could buy real estate for parks or public grounds on bonds or other evidence of debt — the legal question that would hang over every park purchase for the next forty years.

Sources: B. J. Griswold, The Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Indiana (1917), Ch. XXXVIII ("Old Fort Park") and Ch. XXXIX ("Lawton Park"; "First Councilmanic Action on Park Purchases"; "Fort Wayne Entertains the State Fair"), read first-hand; Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation Department, "History of the Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation Department" (published chronology, entries for 1863, 1866, 1900).