Fort Wayne, Indiana · 19th century
1880s
42 dated events in 1880s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
19th century 42 dated mentions
1880s
- 1880The Eastern Star in brief
The Masonic family's open door: The Order of the Eastern Star, the Masonic auxiliary that admitted women alongside Masons, organized its first Fort Wayne chapter, Summit City Chapter No. 45, in 1880 — and surrendered its charter again in 1885.
- 1880Frank R. Barrows and "the finest gallery in the State"
Twenty years, three addresses, one boast: Frank Rufus Barrows was born at Sturgis, Michigan, in August 1854 and arrived in Fort Wayne in 1880, opening a studio with Frank H. Clayton at 18 West Berry Street, a room that had been George Palmer's and Charles Wallin's before them.
- 1881Seavey Hardware Company
The founding is fixed at 5 October 1881 by the spring-1914 newspaper account of the company's reorganization, quoted in full in Griswold's 1917 sketch of the founder (see the founding entries below).
- 1881Seavey Hardware Company — the founding fixed
At the company's reorganization and incorporation in the spring of 1914, a Fort Wayne newspaper account, quoted in full in Griswold's 1917 biographical sketch of the founder, stated: "The Seavey Hardware Company was established in Fort Wayne, October 5, 1881, by the late G. W. Seavey, and has continued as a successful…
- 1881Felix Schanz: the glass plates
He worked as a railroad fireman and in the studio of C. H. Anderson before coming to Fort Wayne in 1881, where he worked first for the Centlivre Brewing Company and then in Frank R. Barrows's studio.
- 1881–1882Olds' Wagon Works — after 1900
Course: Henry G. Olds organised the works in 1881 — his father Noble G. Olds, who settled in Fort Wayne in 1861, had established a lumber yard, machine works and wagon-wheel making before him — and it was incorporated in 1882 with $200,000 capital.
- 1881–1882James A. Jenney and Charles D. Jenney: the arc-light patents
The patents: James A. Jenney came to Fort Wayne in 1881 to manufacture an arc lamp and a small electric dynamo he had invented; the History Center's exhibit record has him demonstrating the city's first arc light in a warehouse in September 1881, with the Jenney Electric Light Company founded by local investors that fall.
- 1881–1895The fourteen-year fight for a tax-supported library
The act: David N. Foster conceived the campaign for a public library in Fort Wayne, and Robert S. Robertson drafted Indiana's public library act, passed 7 March 1881, which allowed a library tax of up to three cents on each 100 dollars of valuation.
- 1881–1899Jenney Electric becomes General Electric
James A. Jenney arrives in 1881 with his arc lamp and dynamo; Jenney lights the New Orleans World's Fair in 1884; Thomson-Houston buys control in 1888; James J. Wood arrives in 1890; GE absorbs the works in January 1899.
- 1881–2015Jenney Electric → General Electric
Founded: 1881 — Griswold (1917) gives the organisation in detail: James A. Jenney, "inventor of an electric arc lamp and a small dynamo, came to Fort Wayne" in 1881 and installed his apparatus at Evans, McDonald and Company…
- 1881–2015The Jenney works and the General Electric century
The Fort Wayne Jenney Electric Light Company was organised in 1881 by Ranald T. McDonald — the developers who later revived the campus spelled the name MacDonald, and both spellings stand in the record — to manufacture the arc lamp and small dynamo of inventor James A. Jenney, whose own entry sits in the Inventors & Inventions section.
- 1881–todayThe movers — the people who built the base
The founders of the electrical century: Ranald T. McDonald organised the Fort Wayne Jenney Electric Light Company in 1881 and stood as its founding president — the decision that put an electrical works on Broadway a decade before GE arrived; the developers of Electric Works named their venture RTM Ventures in his honour.
- 1882Olds' Wagon Works
Founded: Incorporated in 1882 with capital of $200,000. H. G. Olds, president; W. H. Olds, vice-president and treasurer.
- 1882The honor rolls · how the county wrote the names
The county's first printed roll of honor is a newspaper's: the Fort Wayne Daily Gazette of 30 May 1882 — Decoration Day — published the "List of the Honored Dead Lying in Graves in Allen County and Under the Southern Sun," naming the Civil War dead by the cemeteries that hold them, Lindenwood first, and those in…
- 1882–1974The fires that marked the city
On the evening of 16 December 1882 the First Presbyterian church, at Clinton and Berry streets on the site of the present federal building, was destroyed by fire at a loss of $14,500.
- 1882–2026The fire chiefs — Hilbrecht's quarter-century to Lahey
When the council elected a chief for the reorganized department in May 1882, William Hilbrecht won with fourteen votes to Diehl's three, filed his $2,000 bond, and took command with Frank Vogel and J. G. Strodel as his vouchers.
- 1882–2026The long service — the people who stayed
Fire Chief William Hilbrecht commanded for twenty-six years (1882–1908). Postmaster Eugene Gabriel held the mail for twenty-five (1965–90).
- 1883Baseball under lights
A famous first that isn't, “Fort Wayne hosted the first night baseball game, in 1883.” .
- 1883Baseball under lights
Seventeen Jenney arc lamps light Quincy vs. Methodist College. A famous first that isn't, taken up in “Fort Wayne hosted the first night baseball game, in 1883.” .
- 1883–1948The lineage years and the Chiefs' championships, 1883–1948
Professional baseball returned to Fort Wayne in 1883 and then ran, with gaps, for more than six decades under a procession of names — Hoosiers, Farmers, Indians, Railroaders, Billikens, Brakies, Champs, Cubs — before the name that finally stuck, the Chiefs .
- 1883–1948The long lineage: Fort Wayne's minor-league clubs, 1883–1948
Professional baseball returned in 1883 and then ran, with gaps, for more than six decades under a procession of names.
- 1885Bowser sells his first pump
S. F. Bowser sells a self-measuring pump to a Fort Wayne grocer, for kerosene , not gasoline (see “Bowser invented the gasoline pump in 1885.” ).
- 1885Pumps to the world: S. F. Bowser & Co.
The first Fort Wayne product the whole world bought: Sylvanus F. Bowser's self-measuring pump — first sold in 1885, adapted to gasoline in 1905 — turned a Fort Wayne factory on Creighton Avenue into the city's first genuinely global business.
- 1885–1961S. F. Bowser & Company (later Bowser, Inc.)
Founded: 1885, Fort Wayne — Indiana Landmarks and the History Center both give 1885 for S. F. Bowser's company, formed to sell his self-measuring pump.
- 1885–todayThe supplier web: the pumps Fort Wayne sold the world, and its axles
S. F. Bowser sold his first pump — a self-measuring pump for kerosene — in Fort Wayne on 5 September 1885, to grocery and hardware store owner Jake Gumper; the design was patented in October 1887, a hose attachment adapted it to gasoline from 1905, and the Bowser works on Creighton Avenue stood until its demolition in 2012.
- 1886The Scottish Rite: the Valley of Fort Wayne and its cathedrals
To counteract it, Fort Wayne Masons met in the Masonic Temple on December 22, 1886, and applied for a lawful Lodge of Perfection.
- 1886–1956Home Telephone and Telegraph Company
Founded: Incorporated in October 1886 by local stockholders, "for the announced purpose of providing a more extended service at a lower price than had prevailed up to that time" (Griswold).
- 1887–1895The Emerine J. Hamilton Free Reading Room for Women
Founded: Emerine J. Hamilton and her daughters Mary Williams, Ellen Wagenhals and Margaret Hamilton established the reading room in 1887 at 19 West Wayne Street, with about 400 volumes.
- 1887–1954Gertrude A. Muller: the Toidey and the first car seats
The work: Gertrude Agnes Muller (9 June 1887 – 13 October 1954) was a Fort Wayne woman whose inventions were not factory floor accidents but a deliberate career.
- 1888The Fort Wayne Museum of Art
In 1888 J. Ottis Adams began informal classes in drawing and painting in Fort Wayne, carried on afterward by William Forsyth; by 1897 the classes were formally organized as the Fort Wayne Art School.
- 1888The Ladies Relief Union and the visiting nurses
Founding: In 1888 a group of Fort Wayne women organized the Ladies Relief Union with a stated mission: "to help the sick poor of Ft Wayne."
- 1888The Oyster Bar: a saloon table since 1888
The longest table in the city: The house's own history begins in 1888, and the city directories bear the date out and sharpen it.
- 1888–1920The caring institutions in brief · relief, nursing and the visiting nurse
The welfare state in Fort Wayne was first a women's volunteer state: the Ladies Relief Union of 1888, among the city's earliest organized charities, is carried in the Charities chapter; so is the Fort Wayne Visiting Nurse service and Dr. Jessie Calvin, the physician who stands in that record at the head of the city's organized nursing.
- 1888–1922Allen County Sheriff — verified succession points
The directories print the three commissioners in the county officers block for most years from 1888 to 1922, showing the board changing one seat at a time.
- 1888–1923Allen County Sheriff — verified succession points
The county officers block of each Polk directory names the sheriff, and the directories now evidence the office in every directory year from 1888 to 1922.
- 1888–1970The patent city in aggregate: density, not a rank
The Commissioner of Patents' index for 1888 already lists Slattery several times over; the 1889 county history opens its account of the city's flagship works with the sentence that their patents were the proprietor's own family…
- 1888–1982The mayoralty: terms and shape
The Polk directory officer pages now supply a point for nearly every year from 1888 to 1922, the state roster supplies 1946, and the City Council proceedings — whose journals name the clerk at the desk — carry the office from 1967 to the edge of the modern table.
- 1888–todayThe school and the shelf: what Fort Wayne kept
The Fort Wayne Art School began as a small painting class in 1888, occupied at one point the Hamilton family's carriage house, and in 1921 received Theodore Thieme's house at 1026 West Berry Street, the Wayne Knitting Mills president making two conditions that shaped the century: that a museum become a formal part of…
- 1889Tri-State Loan and Trust Company
Founded: In 1889 Perry Randall organised the Tri-State Building and Loan Association — described in the National Register nomination for his Randall Building as the city's first homebuilding company.
- 1889Before the country clubs: golf's first Fort Wayne clubs
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.
- 1889–1922Trust companies, savings banks and the building-and-loan layer
Its anchor firms are profiled in the Businesses section: the Tri-State Loan and Trust Company, grown from the Tri-State Building and Loan Association organised in 1889; the Peoples Trust and Savings Company, founded 1902; and the Dime Trust & Savings Bank.
- 1889–2020International Business College
Founded: Organized in August 1889 by Professor Thomas L. Staples, who had founded the first of six "International" colleges in Ontario in 1882, to teach the penmanship and bookkeeping the business houses of the day required.