Mishawaka, Indiana · 20th century
1900s
69 dated events in 1900s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
20th century 69 dated mentions
1900s
- 1900The composition: the immigrant counts as the record gives them
The Italians: 8 people in 1900 and 993 by 1930, about half of them foreign-born, in two enclaves on the two banks.
- 1900The St. Joe Valley Country Club: the first club on the bluff, 1900–1911
The St. Joe Valley Country Club was organized in 1900 and laid out nine holes on sixty-five acres of the river-bluff property north of the Lincolnway that Frederick G. Eberhart would later buy and give the city.
- 1900–1901The First National Bank of Mishawaka — charter No. 5167
Charter No. 5167 stands in the OCC's 1900–01 granting sequence; the exact organization date is not carried in the record reached, and the settling sources are named rather than the date guessed…
- 1900–todayThe Italian south side: between the tracks, Thirteenth, Spring and Union
The second enclave stood inside the old grid, south of the tracks: Italian Mishawaka counted 8 people in 1900 and 993 by 1930, about half of them foreign-born — the demography is culture's count; the geography is this section's.
- 1900–todayTwin Branch: the neighborhood that took the power plant's name
The dam on the river there was first called the Hen Island Dam; the modern dam was built by Sanderson & Porter for the St. Joseph and Elkhart Power Company, commissioned 26 February 1900, and its powerhouse sent out its first power on 16 December 1903…
- 1901First English Lutheran Church: English Services, and a Consolidation in Progress
The founding: First English Lutheran was organized on 19 November 1901 to do what its name says: hold Lutheran services in English, the first in the city, for the generation that had outgrown St. Peter's German.
- 1901–1979Freddie Fitzsimmons — 217 wins from a Mishawaka boyhood
The Mishawaka root: Frederick Landis Fitzsimmons was born in July 1901 — the 28th in most records, the 26th in the SABR biography, a two-day disagreement the file prints rather than resolves…
- 1902Free Methodist Church
The entry the record allows: The Free Methodist congregation built its church in 1902 at 601 East Grove Street, and the one detail the genealogical timeline preserves of the building is worth the entry by itself: it was built of cement blocks cast from the gravel dug out of its own basement.
- 1902–1868Undertakers and Funeral Homes, 1902–1984
Johnson's directory of 1902–03 gives the town's first undertaker of record: Feiten Eugene A., undertaker, 205 N. Main.
- 1902–1926The founding whole: a program by 1902, a name by the early 1920s, a ground by 1926
The 2015 season preview history carried by usa-365, the area's football record-keeper, states that Mishawaka football goes back "to at least 1902, when they played schools like the South Bend Business College," and that the Mishawaka–Elkhart series began in 1902 and is called in the preview record the oldest prep…
- 1902–1949Major Bros — the packing house the manufacturers' story never claimed
The course: Johnson's directory of 1902–03 lists Major Bros, meats, at 101 E. Joseph — the retail face of the house.
- 1902–1956The laundries — from the Home Laundry to the Laundryette
The course: Johnson's 1902–03 directory lists two: the Home Laundry, at 503 N. Bridge, and Zigler J. W., laundry, at 118 N. Main.
- 1902–2026The game they played: five ways of deciding a champion, and the Cavemen in each
The game the Cavemen play now is the all-in tournament, the NLC's round robin, and a rivalry game under contract — three formats their 1902 predecessors, playing a business college by arrangement, would not recognize, in a sport that still ends its autumn on the same 1926 ground.
- 1902–2026Season-era buckets: the whole life, no decade compressed
Charter years, 1902–1919: The record gives fixtures, not seasons: the Elkhart series from 1902, a business college among the opponents, the Maroons as the name.
- 1902–2026The managers complete: every head coach in order, with the breaks named
The line: (1) Named gap, 1902–1922 — the program's first two decades have no head coach in the record reached; the school record books are the settling source.
- 1903Twin Branch — the dam, the Power City, and the neighborhood
The modern dam was built by Sanderson & Porter of New York for the St. Joseph and Elkhart Power Company — the company commissioned the dam on 26 February 1900, in the profile's account — and power was first produced on 16 December 1903.
- 1903The dam whose first electricity lit another city
The reversal: When bulk power came to the valley it came from a dam on Mishawaka's own river, at Twin Branch, east of the city — and its first electricity, on 16 December 1903, lit not Mishawaka but Elkhart.
- 1903–1909Electric light — a plant of the city's own, then power from upriver
Construction ran from July 1901 to late October 1903; the dam stood 400 feet long on a 21-foot fall, with a powerhouse 176 feet by 112 and four turbines.
- 1903–1937The works at full size
The employment ladder, every rung dated: The plant's growth is best read in its dated employment pegs, each printed with its carrier: twenty-five persons at the incorporated company's start (company history); 140 to 150 about 1893, with $200,000 of annual business (Goodspeed's Memoirs )…
- 1903–2011The YWCA: the county association, and what of it was Mishawaka's
The association's course: The YWCA St. Joseph County Association was formed in South Bend in 1903, on the association's own history.
- 1903–todayThe Beiger House: the mansion that burned to its walls
Construction began in 1903 and was completed in 1909 on the nomination's dating; the mansion's own published history dates the completion to 1908 and Susie Beiger's residence from 1909 — both statements stand in the record, and both are printed here.
- 1904St. Vincent de Paul: the parish conferences
Home visits from the mother parish: The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has served St. Joseph County since 1904 — the county society's own figure, given at its 2023 gathering, whose early records include delivering coal as well as food and helping widows and job-seekers recently released from prison.
- 1904The city hall course
Three centuries of government, two buildings: The infant city's first city hall rose at First and Church Streets and opened in October 1904.
- 1904The paid department of 1904, and Amos Williard
The young city of 1899 needed all three and could not bond for them; Mayor Mix, Martin Beiger and other civic leaders formed the Mishawaka Public Utilities Company to carry the city's debt, and the 1904 settlement that followed, in De Kever's words, "enabled the city to acquire regular police and fire departments."
- 1904The modern masters with a local chapter, at exact strength: two born here, none formed here
Frederick William Boulton (1904–1969) — the earlier modern: A generation before Cameron, the city produced a painter of the Chicago modern era on the same single thread.
- 1904–1919War and consolidation: the missing 1904, and 1914 and 1919
The federal government counted manufactures again in 1904, a census of manufactures only, and the comparative table the Bureau later built — Table 193 of the Abstract of the Census of Manufactures 1919, which carries each sizable city back through 1919, 1914, 1909 and 1904…
- 1904–2022City Hall: the house the utility built, the schoolhouse, the insurance building
The problem and the device, 1902–1904: The new city of 1899 needed a city hall and regular police and fire departments and could not pay for them: a state law prohibited the bonding of city property for such improvements.
- 1904–2024The stations: every house's course
Central, 1904: The paid department began in the combined city hall, police and fire building at First and Church Streets, opened October 1904 — the Central Fire Station, sixteen men and two horse-drawn engines under Chief Williard.
- 1904–2026The fire chiefs: the succession
The documented chain: Amos Williard, chief of the volunteers and first chief of the paid department, 1904 to his resignation in 1905, reinstated 1 April 1907, his second tenure's end unrecorded.
- 1904–todayThe fire department: a founding anchor
The regular department: Like the police, the fire department became a regular, paid city service through the 1904 Public Utilities Company settlement…
- 1904–todayThe municipal utility: the city as its own power and water company
The course of the 1904 lease itself — when it ended, and when the plants passed from the company's ownership to the city's outright — is not in the sources read for this section, and it is named in the gaps entry.
- 1904–todayThe fire chiefs as people: Pressler's decade and the twenty-one
The line at the strength the sister file gives it: The Fire & Safety section owns the fire chiefs' institutional succession, and it stands documented there at these points: Amos Williard, chief of the volunteers and first chief of the paid department of 1904, resigned 1905, reinstated 1 April 1907…
- 1904–todayThe civic buildings: city halls, post offices, and the schools at anchor
The first was the combined city hall, police and fire building of 1904 at First and Church Streets — the complex whose frontages the fire and safety record prints as First and Church, 112 North Church and 204 East First, and whose fire floor was Central Station…
- 1905Merrifield Park
The east side's great park stands on the city's great annexation: The ground at 1000 East Mishawaka Avenue came into Mishawaka with the annexation of January 1905 — the "Great Annexation" of 1,353 acres, its boundaries confirmed by the Indiana Supreme Court by 1908…
- 1905The land: the annexation course
The first and greatest came in January 1905 — the "Great Annexation," in historian Susanna Ernst's term — which took in 1,353 acres west of Logan Street and south of the tracks, the ground later called Hooligan Heights, carrying with it the future Merrifield Park, Mishawaka High School, Fairview Cemetery and the West End…
- 1905The boundary that moved: annexation flags at the jumping censuses
1910 — the Great Annexation inside a +113.8 percent jump: In January 1905 the city took in 1,353 acres west of Logan Street and south of the tracks — the West End and Belgian Town, the ground of the future Merrifield Park, Mishawaka High School and Fairview Cemetery — and the boundary stood confirmed by the Indiana Supreme Court by 1908.
- 1905The Great Annexation and the Supreme Court fight, 1905–1908
The act: In January 1905, in the government record's phrase, the new city's first great act of government was to enlarge itself: 1,353 acres west of Logan Street and south of the railroad tracks…
- 1905–1904The West End as annexed ground: the Great Annexation of 1905
The enclave's ground entered the city in the largest single taking of Mishawaka's map: in January 1905 the city incorporated 1,353 acres of new territory — land west of Logan Street and south of the railroad tracks — in what the historian Susanna Ernst names the "Great Annexation."
- 1905–todayAnnexation as government: the boundary acts
The Great Annexation, 1905: The new city's first great act of government was to enlarge itself.
- 1905–todayHooligan Heights: the far-west peninsula, its plats, its renewal, and its name
The ground entered the city in the Great Annexation (the 1904/1905 variance stands in the annexation entry above), and it was platted in pieces.
- 1906The American Simplex and the Amplex: Mishawaka's brass-era car
The register tradition carried in the encyclopedia record dates the manufacture 1906 to 1915. The History Museum dates the plant itself 1907 to 1910.
- 1906Peppermint oil: half of Indiana's crop bound for England and Germany
The documented export, in pounds: The Farms & Crops section owns the crop — the drained La Salle swamp, the Woodward brothers' 320 acres, the stills — and carries the Indianapolis News report of 13 October 1906 at length.
- 1906–1908The Ludwig Killing, 1906 — the Case the Supreme Court Preserved
On September 25, 1906, Cecilia Ludwig was killed in Mishawaka — the surname and given name as the Indiana Supreme Court's opinion spells them; the press of the day also printed "Cecelia."
- 1906–1910Joseph K. Sosnowski: the Mishawaka years, 1906–1910
A South Bend man's Mishawaka tenancy: Joseph K. Sosnowski worked both cities, and the county harvest gives his course: South Bend in 1899 (Mason & Sosnowski, 307 South Michigan), 1901 (proprietor of the Star Photo Company, 232 South Michigan) and 1905 (129 South St. Joseph); then Mishawaka…
- 1906–1916The founding: the 1906 levy and the second floor of City Hall
"A 1906 tax levy by the Mishawaka Board of Education provided the necessary start-up funds to establish a public library by September of 1907," the nomination records — the same institutional pattern as South Bend's school-board founding across the river, carried whole in that city's libraries record.
- 1907The club census of 1907: Howard's roster
The count: Timothy E. Howard's History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) gives Mishawaka a chapter of its own, and its section on "Societies and Clubs" is the fullest single picture of the membership city ever printed.
- 1907The Masonic Club of Mishawaka
A club beside the lodge: Among the bodies in Howard's 1907 roster stands one that is a club in the plain sense — the Masonic Club of Mishawaka, with H. A. Edris as its president and Guy Richards as its secretary.
- 1907The census of 1907, read as orders: Howard's roster with its officers
The table of organization: Timothy E. Howard opens the societies chapter of his 1907 county history by saying that Mishawaka's "friendly spirit" had "manifested itself also in the formation of social, benevolent and patriotic associations," and then prints the roster "of about all the other societies and clubs of the…
- 1907The bodies around the lodge: a chapter with two numbers, a commandery across the river, the Star
Howard's roster of 1907 prints it as Mishawaka Chapter No. 83, with Tabor Ham as High Priest and John W. Hutchinson — the lodge's recorder — as secretary.
- 1907The Knights of Pythias: Mishawaka Lodge No. 453, its Uniform Rank, and Sunlight Temple
The lodge: The Knights of Pythias — the order Justus Rathbone founded in Washington in 1864 on the friendship of Damon and Pythias — kept Mishawaka Lodge No. 453, with William Garman as Chancellor Commander and Frank P. Christoph as Keeper of Records and Seals in Howard's roster of 1907.
- 1907The Red Men: Mishawaka Tribe No. 304 and its wigwam
The tribe: The Improved Order of Red Men kept Mishawaka Tribe No. 304, with John C. Quick as sachem and George Hitesman — the roster's double penman — as secretary in 1907.
- 1907Tents, hives and camps: the assessment-insurance orders
Mishawaka's shelf of the industry, from the 1907 roster: the Maccabees, twice over — the order split in the era, and Mishawaka kept both halves.
- 1907The Catholic orders: the Knights of America, the Foresters, the Legion, the Columbia
The order itself is documented whole: founded at Nashville on 23 April 1877 — first as the Order of United Catholics, renamed Catholic Knights of America on Bishop Feehan's recommendation — as "a fraternal life-insurance company," its founding aim a death benefit not to exceed $1,000…
- 1907–1914Smallpox: a federal line, and a Mishawaka gap
The county's smallpox stands in a federal return: the United States Public Health Reports' table of cases reported to 6 December 1907 prints, under Indiana, "St. Joseph County — South Bend… June 16–July 20… 6" — six cases in the county's city across five weeks of the summer of 1907, the deaths column recording none.
- 1907–2026The Elks test: no Mishawaka lodge
Howard's 1907 history, in its county account of the order, represents the Elks in St. Joseph County by a single lodge — South Bend Lodge No. 235, which "have built a fine Elks' Temple on West Colfax avenue" — and his Mishawaka roster, which misses little, carries no Elks body.
- 1907–todayThe librarians: Olive Long to Donna Meeks
Olive Long , the founding librarian — "Miss Olive Long," part-time, in the City Hall room for the whole of its nine years, 1907 to 1916, on the nomination's account; whether she continued into the Carnegie building the record reached does not say.
- 1908St. Monica Catholic Church: The North Side Parish
The Catholics of Mishawaka's north side, across the St. Joseph River from the mother parish, voted to pursue a parish of their own at a meeting at St. Joseph's school on 4 October 1908.
- 1908Verne E. Minich and Otto A. Pfaff — the foundry-equipment founders
Verne E. Minich founded the enterprise in 1908 — as the Sand Mixing Machine Company, in the company's own magazine — leasing and then selling a newly developed mechanical sand-cutting device to foundries.
- 1908The vice president's evening: Charles Fairbanks in Mishawaka, 1908
The visit: On October 28, 1908 — a week before the general election — Charles W. Fairbanks, the sitting Vice President of the United States and Indiana's own, came to Mishawaka, and the city turned out for him twice in one evening.
- 1908The Grounds of the Visits — a vice president's evening, 1908; a president at Bethel, 2006
1908: On 28 October 1908, a week before the general election, Charles W. Fairbanks, the sitting Vice President of the United States and Indiana's own, came to Mishawaka, and the city turned out for him twice in one evening.
- 1908The touring record: what the road brought to Mishawaka's rooms
The first is political theater of the literal kind: the Fairbanks convocation of 28 October 1908, an hour's address to a packed Republican hall inside the Century, at the climax of an evening that had already drawn five thousand into the street…
- 1908–1926Wheelabrator — the foundry-equipment works
Verne E. Minich founded the enterprise in 1908 — as the Sand Mixing Machine Company, in the company's own 1976 magazine — leasing and then selling a newly developed mechanical sand-cutting device to foundries.
- 1908–todayThe Italian north side: east of Main, north of Mishawaka Avenue
Its society is the DiLoreto Society, on Division Street, which the culture file records as "alive and well a century later"; its parish anchor is St. Monica, 222 West Mishawaka Avenue, organized from the north side in 1908, whose present church at Mishawaka Avenue and Ann Street was completed 2 October 1927 in the…
- 1909The switch — Mishawaka's electric streetlights, July 1909
The adoption ceremony, as the record keeps it: The Pageant that closed the city's founding celebration in July 1909 is the Events section's and the Story of Mishawaka section's; what belongs to this section is the system it switched on.
- 1909The names that were never fought: two tests, printed whole
The Story of Mishawaka section record of this history tests the legend and answers it — a fiction, traceable to an 1875 novel — and the culture record shows what the city did with the answer: it re-elected her at every anniversary, put a boulder at her "supposed grave" in Lincoln Park in 1909 and a statue in 1910, and…
- 1909Fame Without a Findable Ground — the fastest cars in the world, 1909
The claim: The city's commissioned history carries a sentence of real grandeur: that Mishawaka saw road racing in 1909, with cars from the city “among the fastest in the world.”
- 1909–1910The founding: St. Joseph Hospital, 1909–1910
Construction began in June 1909 on the old convent site, near Fourth and Spring, and the hospital opened on 19 April 1910: three stories, forty beds.
- 1909–1973Allan "Rocky" Lane: the voice of the talking horse
The tie, exactly: Allan Lane was born Harry Leonard Albershardt — the surname also stands as Albershart, the spelling he himself used in an October 1940 signature, per the genealogical record — on September 22, 1909, in Mishawaka, in Penn Township.
- 1909–2005The famous-photograph tests: pageant, flood, implosion — and one borrowed tornado
The Historical Pageant and Fourth of July Celebration of 1909 — the Hotel Mishawaka's opening, the pageant in Lincoln Park before six to ten thousand people, the week's crowds counted at every step in the banked events record…