Fort Wayne, Indiana · 19th century
1820s
28 dated events in 1820s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
19th century 28 dated mentions
1820s
- 1820–1822The first school — Isaac McCoy at the fort
Founded: May 29, 1820, by the Rev. Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary, who opened a school inside the decommissioned Fort Wayne at the urging of the Miami chief Jean Baptiste de Richardville.
- 1820–1990The postmasters — the federal government's local face
The Political Graveyard's roster of the office opens with Benjamin B. Kercheval in 1820, followed by Samuel Hanna, 1820–25.
- 1821–1828The treaties that did not touch this ground
Chicago, 29 August 1821: The Treaty of Chicago took from the Ottawa, Chippewa and Potawatomi a great tract in present Michigan, its southern line running to the Indiana boundary country west of this county.
- 1822The trading houses
Alexander Ewing , an Irish immigrant who had first seen Fort Wayne in 1812, in the column that broke the siege, settled his family here in 1822, kept the Washington House tavern at Barr and Columbia, and bought heavily at the first land sales…
- 1822Isaac McCoy's mission church, and the First Baptist line
The Allen County Genealogical Society's Wayne Township church survey, drawing on the congregation's own record, states that the first assembly of any faith in the Fort Wayne area was organized by the Rev. Isaac McCoy, the Baptist missionary to the Indians: the church was formally organized with eleven charter members…
- 1823The land office and the first sales
Because the district was not yet surveyed, the offices stood vacant until 1823, when President Monroe appointed Samuel C. Vance register and Joseph Holman receiver.
- 1823Suttenfield's Tavern (William Suttenfield / Suttonfield)
Founded: 1823 per the Barr-and-Columbia marker inscription ("North East — Suttenfield Tavern 1823") — The firm record underneath it: the first tavern licence in organised Allen County was granted to William Suttonfield on 10 August 1824 (fee $12.50, circuit court having acted on the application)…
- 1823Wayne Lodge No. 25: the first secret society in Fort Wayne
A lodge older than the county: On March 22, 1823, John Sheets, Grand Master of Masons in Indiana, granted a dispensation to Alexander Ewing, John P. Hedges and Benjamin Cushman, and others, to form a lodge at Fort Wayne.
- 1823–1834The first storekeepers — Suttenfield, Ewing, Henderson, Bourie, Holcomb & Marquis, Coles
The town's first businesses were kept by men the record mostly knows by a licence or a single account: William Suttenfield held one of the first tavern licences — the Barr-and-Columbia marker dates the Suttenfield Tavern 1823.
- 1824Allen County: the act, the tavern, the first officers
The act for the formation of Allen County, approved December 17, 1823, named five commissioners "to determine and locate the seat of justice" — Lot Bloomfield and Caleb Lewis of Wayne County, Abiathar Hathaway of Fayette County, William Conner of Hamilton County, and James M. Ray of Marion County…
- 1824The first taverns and the saloon era, in brief
Licensed from the start: The first tavern licenses in Allen County were granted on August 10, 1824, to William Suttenfield and Alexander Ewing, each paying $12.50 for the privilege, their houses standing on opposite corners of Barr and Columbia streets — Ewing's house was called Washington Hall.
- 1824The first beds in town: the tavern licenses of 1824
Lodging is the town's first licensed business: On August 10, 1824 — months after the townsite was platted — the first tavern licenses in Fort Wayne were granted, to William Suttonfield and to Alexander Ewing, each on payment of $12.50, the Circuit Court having acted on the applications first.
- 1824Bounties, taxes, and the wolf
The county's early history, as reprinted in the Allen County genealogy record, describes the first tax years after the county's organization in 1824 — fifty cents on every male over twenty-one, thirty-seven and a half cents on a horse — and then states: "The State taxes were generally paid in wolf scalps, on which a bounty was allowed."
- 1824–1840Chosen in a tavern — the first officers
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.
- 1824–1883The first jails and the scaffold · 1824–1883
Allen County was organized in 1824, and its first court business was the ordinary business of a frontier county: debts, assaults, stray livestock, and theft.
- 1824–1908Paid in wolf scalps
The county's early history, as reprinted in the Allen County genealogy record, sets out the first tax schedule after the county's organization in 1824 — fifty cents on every male over twenty-one, thirty-seven and a half cents on a horse…
- 1825The County Seminary and the first schoolhouse
Founded: 1825, when Allen County built its first schoolhouse — a brick building, standing behind the site of the later county jail, and remembered in the Griswold-Phelps Handbook of 1913–14 as the first brick schoolhouse in Fort Wayne.
- 1827The canal grant, 1827: the state becomes a landowner
The act of 2 March 1827 made the state a proprietor.
- 1827The Chief Richardville House — the History Center's satellite
The house as museum: The house Jean Baptiste de Richardville built in 1827 at 5705 Bluffton Road — subsidized by the United States under the 1826 Treaty of Mississinewa, and described by the History Center as the oldest Native American building in the Midwest and the only surviving treaty house in the nation…
- 1827–1854W.G. & G.W. Ewing Company (the House of Ewing)
Founded: The Indiana State Library's finding aid for the George W. Ewing letters states plainly that G.W. Ewing "founded the firm W.G. and G.W. Ewing with his brother William in 1827."
- 1827–1888Barnett & Hanna Mill — the first gristmill (later Fairfield Mill, Beaver Mill, Glenwood Mill, Esmond Mill)
Founded: Completed August 1827. Roy M. Bates's specialist study The Water-Powered Mills of Allen County, Indiana (Feb 1942, Allen County Public Library) states plainly: "The first water-powered mill erected in Allen County was completed in August, 1827, by James Barnett and Samuel Hanna."
- 1828Holcomb & Marquis Tannery (later the Robinson / Grand / Randall Hotel building)
Founded: Two independent News-Sentinel accounts agree: the city history ("Absalom Holcomb and Isaac Marquis opened a tannery a year later [than the 1827 gristmill] at the west end of Columbia Street") and Michael Hawfield's Cityscapes history of the Randall Hotel ("The Randall Hotel began in 1828 as a tannery.
- 1828The 1828 trades — Madore Truckery's cooper shop & Holloway Cushman's blacksmith shop (combined thin-record entry)
Founded: 1828 for both — single-source, thin. The only mention found for either business, after targeted searching, is one sentence-pair in the News-Sentinel city history: "Madore Truckery opened his cooper shop that year [1828, the year after the gristmill passage].
- 1828The Methodists: mission of 1828, Berry Street Chapel, and First Wayne Street
The Indiana United Methodist Conference's heritage record and the congregation's historical marker agree: Methodism in the Fort Wayne area was organized as a mission in 1828.
- 1828The Randall Hotel: a tannery that became "the best $2 hotel in Indiana"
From hides to guests: The Randall's building began in 1828 as a tannery at the foot of Columbia Street — built, in Michael Hawfield's account, by Absalom Halcomb and Isaac Marquis, its basement vats soaking hides in urine and oak bark; the genealogical society's timeline names the 1828 tannery on the site as Jacob Fry's.
- 1828–todayFloods · the recorder's roster
The city Flood Control Department keeps a Chronological List of Floods running back to January 1828 . FEMA names the four greatest Fort Wayne floods of the modern record: 1913, 1978, 1982 and 1985 .
- 1829The flight of the fugitive slaves · October 1829
The earliest fully narrated passage of freedom seekers through Fort Wayne comes down in a single document: a manuscript written in the biblical cadence of the Society of Friends by Frederick Hoover , a Quaker of the Richmond settlement in Wayne County, Indiana, dated 1829 and preserved, in Griswold's day, by Hoover's…
- 1829Allen County: the act, the tavern, the first officers
Under a state act of January 1829 authorizing incorporation on a two-thirds vote of the citizens, Fort Wayne voted on 7 September 1829 to incorporate as a town — the vote certified to the board of county commissioners by William N. Hood, president of the meeting, and John P. Hedges, its clerk.