The city at the World's Fair: Chicago, 1893

THE WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION · MAY 1 – OCTOBER 1893

The test was run for an exhibit sent from this ground — a Clay or Harris township exhibitor, exhibit or exhibit-committee name at the World's Columbian Exposition — and it returns no exhibit; but the fair touches this ground's record twice, at documented strength, and both touches print: the first is the county history's own sentence. Howard's history of this county, in its agricultural-fairs passage, carries the local fair's course from the 1858 grounds through the Northern Indiana Agricultural Society's flourishing years on the county grounds between South Bend and Mishawaka (forty acres bought under the act of 1873; the society formed February 3, 1881), and then states the turn in terms: the society "continued to flourish and to furnish exhibitions of a very high order for many years. It was not until the World's Fair at Chicago, in 1892 and 1893, with its extraordinary exhibits from every part of the earth, that the people began to show a want of interest in the simpler and more homelike display of our local fair." That is this ground's documented world's-fair record at its largest: the Chicago fair is the named cause, in the county's own history, of the local fair's decline — the townships' exhibitors and fairgoers were drawn off to Jackson Park, and the homelike display never fully recovered its hold. (Howard's "1892 and 1893" prints as he wrote it: the exposition was dedicated in 1892 and open May 1 to the end of October 1893, with over twenty-eight million visitors in the Cassells' count.)

The second touch is the state's machinery, at the strength the Indiana record supports. Indiana's participation ran through a state commission appointed by the General Assembly in 1891 — among its members, nationally known suffragist May Wright Sewall and the South Bend manufacturer Clement Studebaker — which gathered exhibits at the statehouse ("blocks of stone and coal and samples of corn, wheat, rye, and other grains"), built the Indiana Building for $64,000 (the state-buildings record prints $67,369; both figures stand in the sources reached and the difference is left as it lies), and saw Indiana Day kept on September 27, 1893. The exhibits the state's record names print by their home towns — washing machines from Evansville, plate glass from Kokomo, refrigerators from Michigan City, oil tanks from Fort Wayne, blankets from Seymour, and the Agriculture Building's pyramids of jarred corn, wheat and rye — and no exhibit in the state record reached is attributed to Clay Township, Harris Township or the Granger hamlet. Clement Studebaker's commission seat is a St. Joseph County seat, and it prints here at exactly that strength: a countyman helped run Indiana's fair; he is South Bend's man and South Bend's build's whole, and his seat is not a Granger exhibit. The township-level search behind the negative ran: the Cassells' exhibitor-and-commission record; Howard's fairs passage and township chapters as read for this build; the banked state-fair line (the Awards leg's modern "state-fair bound" champions are a twentieth-century 4-H record and prove nothing for 1893, printed here only so the two fairs are never merged); and the build's one other 1893 thread — Simon Pokagon's Red Man's Rebuke, printed for Chicago in 1893 — which the Tribes leg carries as the Potawatomi band's printed answer to the fair. The Rebuke is the region's famous 1893 document; it is not a Granger exhibit, and this section does not borrow it.

The verdict, whole: no exhibit sent from this ground to the World's Columbian Exposition stands in any record reached — TESTED NEGATIVE at the state-commission and county-history strength — while the fair itself stands in this ground's record as the documented turning point of its own local fair. The settler for a township exhibitor at roll strength is named in the closing article: the Indiana commission's published report and exhibit catalogues name exhibitors the magazine-history summary does not, and a Clay or Harris name there would enter by dated addendum.

Sources:

1. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 1, the agricultural fairs passage — the 1873 act; the forty acres between South Bend and Mishawaka (order of April 20, 1881); the Northern Indiana Agricultural Society (February 3, 1881); the World's Fair sentence, quoted whole.
2. Frank A. Cassell and Marguerite E. Cassell, "Pride, Profits, and Politics: Indiana and the Columbian Exposition of 1893," Indiana Magazine of History — 28 million visitors, May–October 1893; the state commissions' work; Indiana's commissioners and the Board of Lady Managers.
3. Indiana Magazine of History, "Representing Indiana to the World" — the 1891 state commission (May Wright Sewall; Clement Studebaker); the $64,000 building; Indiana Day, September 27, 1893; the named exhibits by town.
4. World's Fair Chicago 1893, state-buildings record — the Indiana Building: Henry Ives Cobb, architect; $67,369 (conflict with the $64,000 above, printed whole).
5. Rebuke as the build's other Columbian thread.