Collecting before there was a museum: the society of 1867 and the refounding of 1895

26 October 1867 – 29 February 1896 · Howard's society history, read whole

The collecting that holds this township's material began at the county seat a generation before it had a museum building, and its dates are now printed. Timothy E. Howard — later this build's county historian — told the society's own story as its president. Steps toward a historical society for the county were taken at South Bend as early as 1867: a first meeting on 26 October 1867, the organisation completed on 2 November 1867, with meetings following. That first society flourished for a time and faded. In August 1894 a party of its pilgrims, standing at the old fort ground, resolved to form a Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan Historical Society broad enough for "the St. Joseph country"; formal steps followed on 22 January 1895, a constitution was adopted on 5 February 1895, and the name chosen was the Northern Indiana Historical Society, its field the St. Joseph valley in Indiana and Michigan and, in Howard's phrase, the mysterious region of the Kankakee. Articles of incorporation were drawn on 4 February 1896 and the charter issued on 29 February 1896 — and the charter's objects, quoted by Howard, write the museum into the society's legal birth: to institute and encourage historical inquiry, to collect and preserve the materials of history, and expressly "the collection and formation of a museum of historical articles," with a library beside it. For Lakeville itself the article's finding is this section's standing one: no historical society or collecting body was ever seated in Lakeville or Union Township in any carrier reached; the township's past was collected, from 1867 forward, by a county society seated twelve miles north, and the Notre Dame Archives' manuscripts collection named in the sources file is that society's paper trail, not a Lakeville institution.