Counted before the Powells: the antebellum community in the censuses, 1840–1860

1840 – 1860

Nine, then twenty-nine, then eighty-eight: the county's Black community before the Civil War was small, counted, and growing. The 1840 census gives St. Joseph County nine Black residents. For 1850 the count stands in conflict, printed whole: the Seventh Census's own Indiana tables — read first-hand — give the county 29 free colored residents, 16 male and 13 female, in a total population of 10,954; a modern telling in Notre Dame Magazine gives "only 39 blacks in all of Saint Joseph County in 1850." The compendium's tables govern here as the published census record, and the 39 stands beside them as an unreconciled conflict, not a correction. The 1860 census, read from the Eighth Census's printed Indiana tables, gives 88 free colored residents — 29 returned as Black and 59 as Mulatto in the tables' own classification, 47 male and 41 female, all 88 native-born, in a county of 18,455 that returned no slaves. Eight years of Article XIII, on the census's own showing, did not empty the county; the community more than tripled across the decade of exclusion.

Where they stood in 1850, township by township: the Seventh Census's subdivision table distributes the 29, and its Mishawaka line is the earliest count this city has. South Bend town held 18 of the 29 — 8 male, 10 female — the valley's antebellum Black center, as it remained. Union Township, in the south county, returned 7 — the Huggart Settlement's ground, where the Indiana Historical Bureau's marker review counts the household of Andrew and Jane Huggart at seven souls in that census (the settlement stays boundary here: Union Township, Karst first-hand in the founding file). And the town of Mishawaka itself returned two free colored residents — its printed line gives 1,410 white residents and 2 free colored, an aggregate of 1,412 — while Penn Township outside the town returned 1,622 white residents and no free colored resident in the printed table. Two people, then, stood inside Mishawaka's town limits in 1850, eighteen years before the household the founding file opens with. Their names do not appear in any source reached: the compendium counts without naming, and the names stand in the 1850 population schedules for this township and town, which are the named settling source and have not been read page by page for this build. The two are printed as a counted presence and a named gap at once — the count is the census's; the names are the schedules' to give.

The named few the record does give are South Bend's, at boundary size: Peter Coleman, settled 1839, the first permanent Black resident of record in the valley; the Garrett Smith family, 1849, builders of the first Black-owned brick home; the barbers James Washington and Mr. Sawyer on Washington Street. The Huggart Settlement's surnames stand in the marker review record: Huggart, Bass (Benjamin Bass bought 120 adjacent acres in 1860), Boone and Manuel. Mishawaka's antebellum Black community has, on the present record, a count and no names; that asymmetry is the record's, and it is printed rather than dressed.

Sources

1. The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850, Indiana volume, Table I (county aggregates) and Table II (population by subdivisions), read first-hand — county free colored 29 (16 M, 13 F), total 10,954; South Bend town 18 (8 M, 10 F); Union Township 7; Mishawaka town 1,410 white + 2 free colored = 1,412; Penn Township 1,622 white, no free colored returned.
2. Population of the United States in 1860 (Eighth Census), Indiana Table No. 2, p. 112, and Table No. 4, p. 129 — 88 free colored (29 Black, 59 Mulatto; 47 M, 41 F; all native-born); county total 18,455; no slaves.
3. Notre Dame Magazine — the conflicting 1850 figure, 39, printed as a conflict.
4. South Bend's black-history record (Reparatory Justice Commission / Landmark Tour carriers) — the 1840 count of nine; Coleman (1839), the Garrett Smith family (1849), Washington and Sawyer; boundary-printed.
5. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker review report 71.1998.1 (17 March 2014), read first-hand — the Huggart household of seven in 1850, all returned "M"; the settlement surnames Huggart, Bass, Boone, Manuel.