Chosen in a tavern — the first officers

1824–1840 · THE COUNTY AND THE TOWN

The county's servants: Allen County's first public servant held his job by the governor's appointment, not by election. Allen Hamilton, an Irish immigrant trader, was commissioned sheriff on 2 April 1824 by Governor William Hendricks, to serve until the people could elect one; he conducted the county's first election on 22 May 1824 and was paid twenty dollars for his first six months. The first elected board of commissioners — William Rockhill, James Wyman and Francis Comparet — then named the county's remaining officers and set about governing from Alexander Ewing's tavern at Barr and Columbia. The pattern of the place was set at once: Hamilton was also, within a year, the county's postmaster, and the early record is full of the same half-dozen men circulating through the sheriff's office, the bench, the commission and the mail.

The town's servants: When Fort Wayne incorporated as a town, its first election — 14 September 1829, at the house of Abner Gerard — chose five trustees: Hugh Hanna, John S. Archer, William G. Ewing, Lewis G. Thompson and John P. Hedges. Under them worked the officers the record describes but does not name: an assessor, a treasurer, a tax collector, a marshal and a street supervisor. The police department counts its own descent from that marshal of 1829, "a single Village Marshal," but his name has not been recovered in the sources reached for this section, and it is left blank here rather than filled. The city charter of 1840 produced the first fully named staff: Franklin P. Randall doubled as recorder and city attorney; George F. Wright was treasurer; Samuel S. Morss doubled as high constable and collector; Robert E. Fleming was assessor, James Post market master, Joseph H. McMaken street commissioner and Samuel Edsall chief engineer — the ancestor of the fire chief's office. The full rosters of these offices stand in the Government section; the point here is the scale: in 1840 the entire government of Fort Wayne could, and did, fit around one table.

Sources:

1. Brant & Fuller, History of Allen County in The Valley of the Upper Maumee River, Vol. II (1889), organization chapter — Hamilton's commission of 2 April 1824, the election of 22 May 1824, the first commissioners.
2. Government section of this history — the 1829 town election and trustees; the first city officers' table of 1840.
3. Fort Wayne Police Department, "Mission and History" (fwpd.org) — the department's descent from the village marshal of 1829.