Fort Wayne, Indiana · 19th century
1890s
44 dated events in 1890s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
19th century 44 dated mentions
1890s
- 1890The German city: the foreign-born series
In 1890 the German-born had been 8.41 percent of Allen County's population and 72.55 percent of all its foreign-born — the German stream was both larger relative to the county and more dominant within the immigrant population than it would be in 1910, when southern and eastern European arrivals (the 331 natives of…
- 1890The state institution and the mental-health record: Fort Wayne State School to the Developmental Center
Indiana opened its School for Feeble Minded Youth at Knightstown in 1879 and relocated it to Fort Wayne in 1890, on East State Street; the Indiana Archives record the first Fort Wayne patient as an eleven-year-old boy from Ossian, in Wells County.
- 1890Elks, Eagles and Moose: the convivial layer
The lodge as clubhouse: The Private Clubs section tells the Elks' Fort Wayne story — Fort Wayne Lodge No. 155 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, instituted February 12, 1890, and builder of the Hillegas Road country club — and the fraternal frame of the Eagles and the Moose…
- 1890–1944University of Saint Francis
Founded: 1890, in Lafayette, Indiana, as Saint Francis Normal School, by the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration — who had come from Germany in 1875 — to train sister-teachers.
- 1890–1960The threshold test: was a farm tractor ever built in Fort Wayne?
The search, and what it found: The standard roster of the industry, C. H. Wendel's Standard Catalog of Farm Tractors 1890 to 1960 , works through more than 900 tractor makers.
- 1890–2007The Fort Wayne State School
Founded: Indiana's institution for children with disabilities was created at Knightstown in 1879; the legislature voted a Fort Wayne building in 1887, and the Indiana School for Feeble-Minded Youth — the period's name, kept here as the record's name — opened in Fort Wayne in 1890 on East State Boulevard, admitting about 300 children.
- 1891Wayne Pump Company (Wayne Oil Tank Company → Dresser-Wayne → Wayne Fueling Systems)
No Indiana incorporation record, 1891/1892 city-directory listing, or contemporary incorporation notice was found.
- 1891–1916The street railway strikes · 1891–1916
Griswold gives the street railway men's strike of the 1891–94 years its own chapter (chapter XLV, "Strike of Street Railway Men").
- 1891–1960The knitting mills
Theodore F. Thieme, a Fort Wayne druggist, decided in 1891 that Americans depended too much on Europe for hosiery; he sold his store at Wayne and Calhoun, imported knitting machines — and knitters — from Germany, and after a year in rented quarters at Main and Clinton moved the Wayne Knitting Mills to West Main Street at Growth Avenue.
- 1891–1960Wayne Knitting Mills
Founded: Spring 1891, Fort Wayne.
- 1892Rub-No-More Company
Founded: A Fort Wayne soap works, struggling when Gustav Berghoff acquired it in 1892 and built it into a prosperous enterprise.
- 1892Gustav Berghoff — soap, not beer
Gustav's line was soap: in 1892 he acquired the struggling Rub-No-More soap works in Fort Wayne and built it into a national laundry-soap brand.
- 1892The Woman's Club League · the federation that built the library
In 1892 the women's clubs of Fort Wayne became one body, and the city got its library: in that year all the literary, musical and art clubs of the city — eleven clubs, in the library history's count…
- 1892Driving Park: where Fort Wayne first raced
A trotting park that took to automobiles: In November 1892 Frederick J. Hayden sold part of his land on the northern outskirts of the city to the newly formed Fort Wayne Driving Association — D. N. and S. M. Foster, Louis and Charles Centlivre, H. C. Rockhill, and Willis Bash among its wealthy backers…
- 1892The downtown clubs: the Commercial Club and its circle
The National Register nomination for the Randall Building states that Perry A. Randall organized the Fort Wayne Commercial Club, forerunner of the Chamber of Commerce, in 1892, and served as its first president.
- 1893Deer: gone for forty years, then everywhere
The Indiana DNR's deer history, as carried on the Allen County deer page, runs in dated lines: the last reported wild deer in Indiana was killed in Knox County in 1893, and Indiana then spent four decades with no deer at all.
- 1894The rolls in stone and bronze
The county's Civil War monument stands in Lawton Park — "Tribute for patriotic citizens of Allen County who fell in defense of the Union 1861–1865," naming Chickamauga, Vicksburg and Gettysburg — dedicated 10 October 1894 on the History Center's account…
- 1894The YWCA · a home and protection for the working girls
The workhorse institution of women's Fort Wayne: the YWCA was founded in Fort Wayne in 1894 as a safe place for employed women to meet — the earliest urban YWCA in Indiana, ahead of Indianapolis (1895) in the Discover Indiana account…
- 1894B'nai Israel, B'nai Jacob, and the Jewish Federation
The Jewish Federation's timeline dates the founding of B'nai Israel, an Orthodox congregation, to 1894; it disbanded in 1936, its members dividing between the other two congregations.
- 1894YWCA Northeast Indiana
Founding: The YWCA was founded in Fort Wayne in 1894 as a safe place for working women to meet — the earliest urban YWCA in Indiana, ahead of Indianapolis (1895) in the Discover Indiana account.
- 1894Charles W. Miner and the new courthouse
Arriving in Fort Wayne in the early 1890s, he worked for Felix Schanz, then opened the Miner & Dexter studio with William G. Dexter in 1894 at 44 Calhoun — the same address that had held Poston's and Jones's studios before it.
- 1894George J. Parrot, the children's photographer
A studio run like a nursery: George J. Parrot was born in Fort Wayne about 1871 and returned to the city by way of Warsaw, opening a studio in 1894 at 62 Calhoun.
- 1894–2006Peter Eckrich & Sons
He settled in Fort Wayne and in 1894 opened a small meat market, making the sausages he had grown up on in Germany.
- 1894–2026The comptroller's desk — and the woman who became mayor from it
The office: The city's chief fiscal office appears in the directories in 1894–95 under the title Comptroller — W. H. Simmons as printed that year, James H. Simonson in 1895–96…
- 1895Components, not implants: the Warsaw distinction, stated plainly
The orthopedic implant industry — the artificial joints and fracture hardware designed, branded and sold worldwide — was born in Warsaw, Indiana: Revra DePuy began making splints there in 1895, Justin Zimmer left DePuy to found his own company in 1927, and four Warsaw engineers founded Biomet in 1977…
- 1895The Fort Wayne Public Library opens
Opening: The Fort Wayne Public Library was formally opened at a public meeting on 28 January 1895, Mayor Chauncey B. Oakley presiding.
- 1895The birthday the city forgot: the centennial of 1895
What the money bought, October 15–18, 1895 by the History Center's dates, was a week of civic theater: street-spanning arches, bunting and electric lights; a 100-gun salute to open — Leininger's account puts the salute on the morning of October 16…
- 1895–1904Three moves in six years: Bayless, Brackenridge, Elektron
Bayless house: In September 1895 the library moved to the former Sol D. Bayless property at the southwest corner of Wayne and Clinton streets, reopening on 7 October 1895; the site later held the Strand Theatre.
- 1895–todayThe directors
The first three: Susan Catherine Wines Hoffman (1895–96), who came from the Hamilton reading room, resigned in 1896.
- 1896Sam Wolf and Myron Eisman Dessauer — the department store
Sam Wolf and Myron Eisman Dessauer opened Wolf & Dessauer in 1896 at 808 South Calhoun Street, the store that became downtown Fort Wayne's great department store.
- 1896A bicycle club for a currency question
The club: In the presidential campaign of 1896 — the free-silver election, fought over the money question — Fort Wayne fielded a bicycle club for a monetary policy.
- 1896Before the saucers: the airship wave of 1896–97 over Indiana
The wave: Half a century before "flying saucer" entered the language, the United States went through a wave of reports of a mysterious airship — a powered, steerable craft of a kind no one could exhibit on the ground — moving eastward from California across the country between November 1896 and May 1897.
- 1896–1969Wolf & Dessauer
Founded: Opened in 1896 by Sam Wolf and Myron Eisman Dessauer at 808 South Calhoun Street. The store moved to 119 West Berry Street (1904–1918) and finally to the northeast corner of Clinton and Wayne streets — the six-story white terra-cotta flagship, one of the largest retail buildings in Indiana.
- 1897Nursing schools in brief, and the two-system city
The oldest was Hope Hospital's training school, begun in 1897 and carried through the Methodist and Parkview names; it moved to English Hall at Randallia in 1953 and closed in 1991, having trained more than 2,404 nurses.
- 1897The first sellers: a bicycle man changes trades
The first car: The record gives Fort Wayne's first automobile to H. W. Meyer, who brought the first one to the city in 1897; the Fort Wayne Sentinel's pictorial history named him in its installment of 31 October 1914, and named W. H. W. Peltier, E. B. Kunkle and Dr. G. A. Ross among the other early owners who appeared…
- 1897–1910The first automobiles: three claims, and no crown
The claim the histories carried: Bert J. Griswold's Pictorial History of Fort Wayne (1917), repeating the Fort Wayne Sentinel's pictorial-history installment of 31 October 1914, states the matter flatly: "H. W. Meyer brought the first automobile to the city of Fort Wayne in 1897.
- 1897–1918The Shamrocks: the semi-pro institution, 1897–1918
Between the league clubs, and underneath them, Fort Wayne had a second baseball institution that outlasted most of the professionals: the Fort Wayne Shamrocks , organized in 1897 and, in the words of the Griswold-Phelps Handbook and Guide to Fort Wayne of 1913–14, "in active work every year since that time"…
- 1898The Spanish-American War · two companies, a war spent in camp
Fort Wayne's Spanish-American War regiment was the 157th Indiana Volunteer Infantry — the 3rd Regiment of the Indiana National Guard under a federal number — mustered in on 10 May 1898 under Colonel George M. Studebaker.
- 1898United Knitting Mills
Founded: Incorporated September 1898, Fort Wayne. The contemporaneous Fort Wayne City Directory for 1900 (R. L. Polk & Co.) lists the firm with its incorporation stated in the listing itself: "United Knitting Mills, Cleveland and L E & W R R. Incorporated September, 1898.
- 1899The Knights of Columbus: the Catholic order that kept growing
Thirty-six signatures: On October 15, 1899, thirty-six Fort Wayne men signed the charter of Knights of Columbus Council No. 451 — the first Knights of Columbus council in Fort Wayne and the second in Indiana, four months behind Indianapolis's Mater Dei Council No. 437.
- 1899–1900Roach & Albanus: the carriage house that built an automobile
The automobile: Late in 1899 the firm announced plans to build an automobile of its own.
- 1899–1939The trade, part one: implement houses and agencies
The harvester companies were here first: The Wisconsin Historical Society's International Harvester photo albums hold a photograph, dated 1899, of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company's Fort Wayne dealership…
- 1899–todayThe Journal Gazette (newspaper — business line only)
Formed in 1899 by merging the Fort Wayne Journal (its company incorporated 12 May 1884) and the Fort Wayne Gazette (established by D. W. Jones in the early 1860s); the city's morning newspaper.
- 1899–todayMedPro Group — first the Physicians' Guarantee Company, then The Medical Protective Company
Founded: 1899, in Fort Wayne, as the Physicians' Guarantee Company, by two Fort Wayne physicians, Dr. Alpheus P. Buchman and Dr. Miles F. Porter.