The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1889 — 1908
The first courses: Golf reached Fort Wayne in the last years of the nineteenth century, and its first homes were parks, not clubs with gates. The History Center's record of the county's golf artifacts lays the sequence out plainly: early courses were created in Hamilton Park in 1889 and in Lakeside Park in 1890, and the Kekionga Golf Club followed in 1892, on grounds that are now Memorial Park. These were the city's first golf organizations — sporting clubs of the park era, formed a decade and a half before anyone in Fort Wayne built a country club.
A golf club in the directories: Bert Griswold's 1917 county history shows an organized Fort Wayne Golf Club in the years just before the First World War: its biographical volume describes George Waldschmidt, a German-born grocer, as identified with the Fort Wayne Golf Club "since the early stage of its existence," having served nine years as its secretary. The name matters. Fort Wayne's golfers had a club of their own — distinct in the record from the country club founded in 1908 — before golf became the anchor of the private-club city.
Sources:
- The History Center, virtual exhibit record for a c. 1930 golf bag and clubs (fwhistorycenter.org) — Hamilton Park 1889, Lakeside Park 1890, the Kekionga Golf Club 1892 on grounds now Memorial Park.
- B. J. Griswold and Mrs. Samuel R. Taylor, The Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Vol. II (1917) — the Waldschmidt sketch: the Fort Wayne Golf Club and its secretary of nine years.