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1787–1850 · ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, WITH THE TOWNSHIPS' OWN LINE PRINTED AT ITS TRUE SIZE
Indiana was technically a free state — the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the state constitution of 1816 both banned slavery — and practically a closed one. The Reparatory Justice Commission's report collects the Black Laws whole: state law barred Black residents from voting, serving on juries, holding office, serving in the militia, practising law, testifying against Whites, or even legally residing in the state without proof of freedom; Black children were barred from public schools if even one White parent objected; and the 1851 constitution's Article XIII prohibited any "negro or mulatto" from coming into or settling in the state, voided their contracts, and fined anyone who employed them. One scholar quoted by the Commission calls Indiana "the most Negrophobic state in the North." Settlement happened anyway, and the census counts it: St. Joseph County returned 9 Negro residents in 1840 and 29 in 1850. The townships' own line is the banked population fragment's, and it stands: in 1850 neither Clay nor Harris returned any free coloured residents — the county's 29 lived in Centre, Penn, Portage and Union townships and in South Bend. No first Black family of either township can be named from the open record, and this article does not invent one; the manuscript-level settler is named at the end of this article.
The county's first free Black rural settlement was not in Granger's townships. Samuel Huggart, born in Virginia, bought 80 acres at the La Porte Land Office on 11 September 1834 (La Porte Cash Certificate No. 2986, $100 at $1.25 an acre; patent approved 20 March 1837) — the northwest quarter of Section 29, T36N R2E, in Union Township northwest of Lakeville, ground now bounded by Osborne Road, Indiana 4, Mulberry Road and Oak Road, east of Potato Creek State Recreation Area. His brother Andrew (born 1816 in Virginia, married Jane Clark in 1839) arrived in 1848; the 1850 census shows Andrew's household of seven. The Huggart Settlement held about thirty people at its peak around 1880 — 28 "mulattoes" counted — and disappeared in the 1890s; its families are buried at Porter Rea Cemetery (established 1854, now inside Potato Creek State Park), a Hardy Manuel cabin still stands, and Andrew Huggart's South Bend Tribune obituary of 1 October 1881 calls him the "first colored man to run for office" in St. Joseph County, the office unknown. Both brothers were members of Sumption Prairie Baptist Church. In South Bend itself, the first permanent Black resident is believed to be Peter Coleman, settled 1839; the Garrett Smith family was the first Black family known to own property in the city, owning its first brick home in 1849; James Washington, a free Black barber, kept an Underground Railroad room. A different Powell family — Rebecca or Farrow Powell, expressly "no known relation" to the fugitive-case Powells below — moved to South Bend in the 1850s, bought a home on Main Street in 1858, and were charter members of Olivet A.M.E. Church. The Commission gives the county's Black population as 340 by 1890, and a South Bend-specific 1890 census as 572; the two figures print here whole, unresolved — the Tribune's examination of the report (5 October 2026) notes that both trace to Buford Gordon's 1922 study rather than directly to the U.S. Census, and that most 1890 schedules were destroyed in the January 1921 Commerce Department Building fire.
The county's freedom case, litigated whole, is the Powell case of 1849–1850. David Powell, his wife Lucy, and their sons Lewis, Samuel, George and James escaped Kentucky on 9 October 1847 and bought land near Cassopolis, Michigan. On the night of 27 September 1849, Kentuckians under John Norris broke into the Powell home, seized Lucy and three sons — George, 16, and James, 14, among them — bound them, and started for Kentucky. Neighbour Wright Maudlin overtook the party near South Bend about noon the next day and obtained a writ of habeas corpus. Edwin Bryant Crocker, admitted to the bar in 1842 at age 24, and Albert G. Deavitt argued for the Powells before St. Joseph County Probate Judge Elisha Egbert: Norris held no certificate of removal, which the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 required, and had sought no judge in Cassopolis. Judge Egbert ruled for the Powells and discharged them. Norris, holding a Circuit Court writ, had the family jailed over the weekend; his attorney J. A. Liston jumped on a table urging the Kentuckians to shoot anyone who interfered; Norris and his men were then themselves arrested as rioters and for assault and battery. A crowd of 150 to 400 Black residents from Michigan and Indiana, Cass County Quakers, and South Bend supporters gathered; the Powells were discharged and escorted home. Norris then sued in the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Indiana (filed 21 December 1849) against Crocker, Leander B. Newton, George W. Horton, Solomon W. Palmer, David Jodon, William Wilmington, Lot Day Jr., Amable M. Lapiere and Wright Maudlin, Justice John McLean presiding on circuit. At the hearing of 20 May 1850 McLean ruled that Norris's ownership stood assumed, Crocker not having specifically denied it, and the jury returned $2,856 against the defendants: Lucy, 40, valued at $500; Lewis, 20, $800; George, 16, $750; James, 14, $700; and $165.80 for Norris's expenses at South Bend. Norris sued fifteen more people in twelve further lawsuits and recovered $500 more. The Powell family remained free. McLean was later one of two dissenters in Dred Scott (1857). One conflict prints whole: the Reparatory Commission's one-paragraph summary says "the Powells were eventually required to pay Mr. Norris for the loss of his property," while the case record as carried in Crocker's own 1851 report and the AALT courthouse account assesses the $2,856 against the nine named rescuer-defendants, not against the family. Both print; the case record is the fuller source and is followed for the figures above.
Named gap (townships).No township freedom case beyond the county's Powell case was found in any open source. Settler: IPUMS NHGIS township race tables for Clay and Harris, 1860–1940; the census manuscripts for the same span; St. Joseph County court records.
Sources: South Bend Reparatory Justice Commission, Final Report (filed 4 May 2026), History §I; Kevin Taylor, "E.B. Crocker and the South Bend Fugitive Slave Case," Golden Note Vol. 67 No. 1 (Sept. 2020), reproducing Crocker's 1851 report; AALT (IUSB), St. Joseph County Courthouses page; Frederick A. Karst, "A Rural Black Settlement in St. Joseph County, Indiana, before 1900," Indiana Magazine of History; Indiana Historical Bureau marker text review 71.1998.1 (Huggart Settlement); Indiana DNR State Parks, Huggart Settlement pages; banked population fragment (1850 township returns).