Mishawaka, Indiana · 19th century
1830s
58 dated events in 1830s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
19th century 58 dated mentions
1830s
- 1830Into market: the land office and the first entries
Surveyed land could be bought, and the county's land was bought fast: Chapman's county history states the opening plainly: "The lands in St. Joseph county, although ceded to the United States Government some years previous by the Pottawatomie Indians, did not come into market until the spring of 1830.
- 1830Where the paper lives: recorder, surveyor, and the archives
Mishawaka's land paper has always lived in South Bend, and the county built its archive deliberately: The county seat is four miles down the river, and the townsite's deeds, plats and mortgages were recorded there from the beginning, in the office of the county recorder…
- 1830The first cabins, 1830–1832
Settlement reached the rapids a few years before the works did: The earliest white settlers near the future townsite came in 1830 — the families the record names as Coe, Mote and Skinner — followed in 1831 by families from Ireland.
- 1830–1860The First Courts, the First Sheriff, and the First Jail — the County Frame Whole
The first term: St. Joseph County was formed by act of the General Assembly approved 29 January 1830, its organization effective 1 April 1830, and its Board of Justices assembled on 27 August 1830 at the house of Alexis Coquillard, with L. M. Taylor…
- 1831–1881The law over their heads: the 1831 bond law, Article XIII, and the 1851 referendum
The regime began with a bond: Indiana's act of 1831 required every Black person coming into the state to register and to give a bond of five hundred dollars, with sureties, conditioned on good behavior and self-support — a sum beyond the reach of nearly any newcomer, which was the point.
- 1831–2012The chronological ladder — Mishawaka's firms, oldest first
1831–32 — Joseph Pemberton's lathe. A settler's lathe turning chairs and bedposts near the rapids, counted by historian Janice Bridges, in De Kever's account, as the first manufacturing in the area — before the town, before the furnace.
- 1832Bog iron and Alanson Hurd
Alanson M. Hurd of Detroit heard of the deposits and, in the summer of 1832, sent William Earl to scout them. Earl found a large deposit near the Twin Branches, three miles upriver.
- 1832The township frame: Penn Township's series
The city sits inside a township older than itself, and the township counts everyone — inside the line and out: Penn Township was one of the three original townships laid out by the county board on 6 May 1832 — Penn taking all of the county east of Range Two East in the first division…
- 1832–1845The iron system: ore, charcoal, and water
Alanson M. Hurd of Detroit sent William Earl to scout the deposits in the summer of 1832; Earl found a large deposit near the Twin Branches, three miles upriver.
- 1832–1848Before the town: the county's first wars
The Black Hawk War predates the town: The St. Joseph Iron Company's townsite on the south bank of the river was platted in 1833; the Black Hawk War was fought in 1832.
- 1832–todayThe Vistula Road: the state road of 1832, and Second Street
The town was bisected by a road before it was much of a town: In February 1832 the Indiana legislature appointed commissioners "to survey, mark and locate a road from South Bend… by way of the mouth of the Elkhart River… and the county seat of Lagrange County to the east line of this State, in the direction of Vistula…
- 1833The school section: how the townsite was bought
Indiana sold its school lands through a machinery of its own, modeled on the federal example but run by state and county officers: the congressional township's school trustees subdivided the section into numbered lots and fixed a minimum price for each division, and the county's school commissioner conducted the sales…
- 1833Hurd's plat as an instrument
The founding document of the city is a surveyor's description, and Howard prints it whole: Alanson M. Hurd's dedication of the village of St. Joseph Iron Works, signed 15 July 1833, describes a plat of fifty-two and seven-tenths acres: its exterior line "begins on the top of the bluff, on the south side of the St.…
- 1833The addition system: the legal frame of a paper town
The founding generation's filings can be counted whole, because Howard enumerates them: Hurd's original plat (1833); its re-filing with additions on three sides (1835); Hurd's out-lots (1835); Barbee & Harman's town plat (1835); Taylor's Addition (1836); Indiana City (1836); Fowler's Addition (1836)…
- 1833The village of St. Joseph Iron Works
The town was the works, wearing a plat: In the summer of 1833 Hurd platted his town on the south bank around the furnace — the founding is dated July 15, 1833 — and named it for the enterprise: the Village of St. Joseph Iron Works.
- 1833The firms, at spine size: the cluster beats
The furnace and the water-power cluster: The cluster begins where the Story of Mishawaka section begins: Hurd's blast furnace of 1833–34, the first successful iron furnace in Indiana, blown in on bog ore and charcoal, and the dam of 1837 — 577 feet long, $38,000…
- 1833The townsite the schoolchildren owned
Indiana sold its school lands through its own machinery, and Chapman's Penn Township history gives the transaction its fullest surviving form: "This land (being school land), where Mishawaka now stands, upon petition of the settlers to the School Commissioner, was purchased Jan. 1, 1833, by Mr. Hurd, who had promised…
- 1833–1838The four plats: two towns on each bank, 1833–1838
The south bank was platted first, around a furnace: Alanson M. Hurd bought the 640-acre School Section 16 on 1 January 1833 at $1.25 an acre, and in the summer of 1833, as his blast furnace rose, the village of St. Joseph Iron Works was platted to the south — founded, in the city's commissioned history's dating, on 15 July 1833.
- 1833–1838Four paper towns, gathered into one name
Alanson Hurd's village of 1833 was St. Joseph Iron Works. Indiana City was platted on the north bank.
- 1833–1927The towns the city absorbed: four plats, a furnace village, and the ground that came in after
The first was a company community in the strict sense: the village of St. Joseph Iron Works, platted in the summer of 1833 around Alanson Hurd's blast furnace, its first population — about a hundred residents in 1834…
- 1833–todayThe Belgians: the city within the city
The chain began with a priest's letters: Father Louis de Seille, the first Belgian in the St. Joseph River valley, came to America in 1832 and in 1833 sent letters home to Belgium encouraging his former altar boys to follow.
- 1834The crossings, whole
Before the first bridge there was a ferry, and the marker record gives the crossing's whole early course in four structures: The Indiana Historical Bureau's First Bridge marker (71.1968.2), which stood at the southwest corner of Main and Mishawaka Avenue, records that a ferry worked the crossing from 1834…
- 1834First Presbyterian Church: The Oldest Organization in the City
The founding: The First Presbyterian Church was organized on 25 July 1834, while Mishawaka was still the iron-works village of St. Joseph, by the Hurd, Dean and Smith families with the Rev. Noah M. Wells, who had come to the village as a furnace supervisor, and it worshipped first in Philo Hurd's home and in Earl's Tavern.
- 1834The county frame: the Huggart Settlement is not Mishawaka's
The county's earliest Black settlement stood in the south county, and this entry prints the boundary so the Mishawaka file neither claims it nor loses it: Frederick A. Karst's article in the Indiana Magazine of History , read first-hand, documents the Huggart Settlement: Samuel Huggart bought eighty acres at the La…
- 1834The first houses: two hotels, one saloon outside the limits, and the temperance fight of 1834
The saloon that started the argument: Timothy Edward Howard's History of St. Joseph County (1907) opens its temperance chapter with Mishawaka: "In 1834 a similar society was organized in Mishawaka" — a temperance society, a year after the town's founding…
- 1834Flour first: the mill-race ground the food trade started on
Orlando Hurd opened the Mishawaka Hotel in 1834, and "the traveling public were furnished with ample entertainment in the wilderness of the St. Joseph Valley," as the 1875 county atlas puts it; the first preaching in the settlement was held in a tavern kept by Mr. Finch, the same atlas records.
- 1834Temperance as an actor on this plant
The crusade's local course, at pointer size: Mishawaka organized a temperance society in 1834, the year of its first iron furnace, and took offense at a saloon opened just outside its limits; the fight's whole course — the society, the Washingtonians, the dry-law controversies…
- 1834–1868First classrooms: the subscription school, the select school, and Institute No. 1, 1834–1854
The first school: Mishawaka's schooling begins, on the record the schools themselves keep, in 1834 — a small class taught by a Miss Thatcher in a private home, in the iron-works village's first years.
- 1834–1901The first forms — gristmill, tannery, stores and taverns, the bank, the market house
The first gristmill — here, a flouring mill, and its builder's name is a conflict: Howard's business-enterprises roll states it in one sentence: "During the year 1834, Orlando Hurd opened a hotel for the accommodation of the traveling public; and in the following year Francis P. Taylor erected the first flouring mill."
- 1834–1908The river as transit: the ford, the ferry of 1834, and the subscription bridge of 1837
The first organized crossing service was a ferry: the Indiana Historical Bureau's marker at the southwest corner of Main Street and Mishawaka Avenue records that the first bridge replaced a ferry which had operated here from 1834, and the 1875 illustrated atlas of St. Joseph County carries the same beginning in its…
- 1834–1963The postmasters: the federal government's local face
The office that named the town: The Mishawaka post office was established in the spring of 1834, before the town had the name — and, on Chapman's telling, the office gave the town its name: the Indian name "Mishawaka" was given to the post office "at the suggestion of Mr. Werrington, who was appointed postmaster."
- 1834–1990The two oldest houses: the Ellis-Schindler and Merrifield-Cass houses
The older building: The Ellis-Schindler House at 900 Lincolnway West is a Greek Revival house of 1834 — one-and-a-half stories of wood clapboard on a brick foundation, its heavy raking entablature carried on dentils and regulae, its recessed entry porch framed by paneled pilasters carved with stylized honeysuckle…
- 1834–2011The web as one story: who staffed Mishawaka's schools
The subscription school of 1834 and the town superintendent of 1848 answer to the iron-works village's own ambition; the Catholic classes begin with Father Edward Sorin's Holy Cross missionaries in 1844 — the Religion section owns the mission — and settle into St. Joseph's vestry, then its 1864 brick schoolhouse.
- 1835The other instruments: Barbee, Indiana City, the Fowlers, Taylor
Its title is "Plat of the Town of Mishawaka," made by William Barbee and Henry Harman on 2 April 1835 and acknowledged 20 April 1835 as the "Town Plat of Mishawaka," by the proprietors, "William Barbee and Henry Harman, by William Barbee as Agent."
- 1835The water-power ground: dam, races, and the reserved tract
The town's second title system was written in water: The St. Joseph Iron Works' charter — the act approved 22 January 1835 constituting Hurd, John J. Deming, John H. Orr and their associates "the president, directors and company of the St. Joseph Iron Works, for the purpose of manufacturing iron" (Local Acts 1834, page 79)…
- 1835Four plats on two banks
On April 2, 1835, William Barbee and Henry Harman made their own plat immediately east of the works, and titled it, outright, the "Plat of the Town of Mishawaka" — the first recorded plat on which the name Mishawaka appears, as Howard notes; the settlement it planted was known as Barbee Town.
- 1835Flour first: the eastern market of the mill town
The first thing Mishawaka shipped out was flour: The town's first flouring mill rose in 1835, two years after the plat, and by 1858 flour was the largest single manufacture in the town's economy…
- 1835First United Methodist Church: The First Church Building
A society of eight members was organized on 19 July 1835 — the genealogical timeline also carries a duplicate organization row under 1836, and the 1835 date stands here as the society's own settled date, with the duplicate noted.
- 1835–1899The first servants: five trustees and a clerk of the election
The election of 1835: Mishawaka's public service begins with a return of election.
- 1835–1963The long tail, II: trustees, councilmen, clerks, marshals and the appointed desks — entries 28–58
James White — one of the five trustees elected 31 January 1835 at the house of Orlando Hurd, the first public servants of the place (Howard (1907), the election return).
- 1835–2022A County Court at South Bend, and Mishawaka's Own Officers
On January 1, 1835, the village of St. Joseph Iron Works — the furnace settlement on the river from which the city descends — was organized with trustees White, Deming, Stancliff, De Camp, and Sanderlands; Chapman's county history calls it the first village organization in the county.
- 1835–todayThe frame: trustees, a town board, then a city
The village of 1835: On 31 January 1835 St. Joseph Iron Works became the first incorporated village in St. Joseph County, ahead of South Bend, and its residents elected five village trustees…
- 1835–todayPublic Servants: Open Questions
The named gaps, with their settling sources: (1) The town officers of 1835–1899 between the first trustees and the last town board — the Mishawaka City Council Records, 1845–1977, at the Hesburgh Libraries, and the town minute books they continue.
- 1836Battell Park
The city's first public park began as ground reserved, and withheld, on a speculative plat: When Joseph Battell and Grove and James R. Lawrence platted Indiana City on the north bank in 1836, they reserved the high riverfront tract — the ground Howard's history describes as "reserved for water power"…
- 1836–1979The churches as buildings: a survey of the unlisted sacred fabric
The first generation: The city's first church building was a Methodist society's, raised in the fall of 1836 — a year before the town's plats were united.
- 1836–todayIndiana City's paper geography: the park that was a power reserve, and the squares never built
The boldest lines on any Mishawaka plat were never built on: the Indiana City plat of 1836 reserved its riverfront for industry and its interior for institutions, and the city's present map still carries the reservations — under other uses.
- 1837The water-power town
The dam turned a furnace site into an industrial town: In 1837 the works' proprietors dammed the river at the head of the rapids.
- 1837The crossings
A two-bank town lives or dies by its bridges: The first bridge crossed in the dam's year, 1837 — built by popular subscription for $2,499, west of the dam, joining the furnace town to the north-bank plats while the union act was still a year away.
- 1837St. Paul's Episcopal Church: The Pro-Cathedral Years
The founding: St. Paul's was organized on 20 April 1837 by the Rev. Charles B. Stout — who had come from Edwardsburg, Michigan — and the Rev. Henry F. M. Whitesides, as the diocesan archives spell the second founder's name; the parish's own published history spells it Whitehead, and both spellings stand as the two records give them.
- 1837–1889The race economy, counted in 1889
Ward Baker's study of Mishawaka on the eve of the Civil War, resting on the Hydraulic Company's records and the press of 1837, puts it in one sentence: "Factories occupied the low land along the river bank and the race, while private residences and business houses were along the streets to the south."
- 1837–todayTwo banks, one town: the river-divided halves as lived places
The river was the town's first street and its first wall: until 1837 the two banks were separate settlements joined by a ford and a ferryman.
- 1837–todayStreet names and renamings: the documented equations
Race Street keeps the oldest industrial name in the city: the dam of 1837 stood at its foot, and the races it fed lined both banks.
- 1838One town, one name: the act of 1838
The legislature made Mishawaka a single town, and gave it the village's name: On February 17, 1838, an act of the General Assembly was approved uniting the several towns and additions at the rapids under one name and one incorporation (Indiana Local Laws 1837–38, Chapter CCXXXIII, page 410).
- 1838–1843Removal's course on this ground, 1838–1843
When that disputed treaty's deadline passed on 5 August 1838, Governor David Wallace authorised General John Tipton to remove the band by force; Tipton's militia surrounded the Twin Lakes village at the end of August, the rolls recorded 859 people, and on 4 September 1838 the column set out…
- 1838–1921The second rank — Howard's incorporation roll and the directories' small headings
Howard's roll, the firms no other entry carries: the Mishawaka Iron and Manufacturing Company, organized under an act approved February 17, 1838, capital one hundred thousand dollars — John N. Sherman, Orlando Hurd, George W. R. Fowler, Charles W. Pomery and Alonzo Delano…
- 1839The first brewer and the first distiller: John Wagner, tested
Peter J. De Kever's history of the city, commissioned by Mishawaka itself, traces the Kamm & Schellinger company's origins to "John Wagner, who had operated a brewery and distillery in town since 1839."
- 1839The distillers: one documented still, then a searched silence
The positive, restated at its size: Mishawaka's distilling record opens with the strongest early claim in either city's build: John Wagner operated a distillery in the town from 1839, on the city history's record, beside his brewery — a still running in the iron-works town when South Bend had no maker of any kind.
- 1839Wine and mead: the searched negatives, at true size
Both negatives are printed at their true size, which is this one paragraph: the leg that found a distillery in 1839 and a brewery in a pizza palace reports, for wine and mead and cider, that there is nothing to report, and says how it looked.