The antebellum Black community, counted — and the thirteen of 1870, named as a gap

The county's antebellum Black community is documented, and it is not in Penn Township. The Huggart Settlement, in Union Township in the county's southwest, was settled in late 1834 by brothers Samuel and Andrew Huggart and is regarded as the first rural African American settlement in northern Indiana (Indiana Historical Society, Early Black Settlements by County; Frederick A. Karst, “A Rural Black Settlement in St. Joseph County, Indiana, before 1900,” Indiana Magazine of History, September 1978, pp. 252–268). Its families carried the surnames Huggart (from Virginia, by way of Ohio), Bass (Guilford County, North Carolina, by way of Terre Haute), Powell (South Carolina), Manual and Boone (North Carolina); the census counts the settlement at 7 persons in 1850, 8 in 1860, 18 in 1870 and a peak of 28 in 1880; Andrew Huggart was the first Black person to seek public office in this county, on Karst's research, the office itself undetermined; and the settlement's abolitionist neighbor Solomon W. Palmer kept a sawmill beside it. Two state markers hold the ground now: Huggart Settlement (ID 71.1998.1) and Porter (Rea) Cemetery (ID 71.2003.1).no free colored residents in Penn in 1850 and none in 1860, and thirteen in 1870 — in the census's Penn-including-Mishawaka form, so the thirteen are the township form's count, not the village's. The names of the thirteen were pursued and not reached at name strength in this section: the schedules themselves — the 1870 population schedules for Penn Township — sit behind FamilySearch images that this history could not read at name strength, and the open surname index for the county's 1870 census (South Bend Area Genealogical Society) carries no race column by which the thirteen could be picked out of the township. That element therefore closes exactly as the register instructs: named gap — settler: the U.S. Census of 1870, population schedules, Penn Township, St. Joseph County, Indiana (NARA M593; FamilySearch images), with Audrey C.. The colonization answer prints from the record: Article XIII's third section offered the county's Black residents a state fine-fund toward emigrating to Liberia, the fund legislation of 1852 staying on the books until 1865; the Indiana Historical Bureau's list of Indiana emigrants to Liberia names emigrants from Madison, Lafayette, Jackson County, Wayne County, Attica and elsewhere — and no St. Joseph County emigrant appears in it; Chapman and Howard print no Penn colonization answer. The abolition-press test closes the article: the county's antebellum paper of record, the St. Joseph Valley Register (founded September 12, 1845, by Schuyler Colfax and Albert W. West), was a Whig paper — “inflexibly Whig” by its own prospectus, its editor doubting Free Soil sincerity — and no abolition paper published in this county was found. Verdict: the community is dug whole at county strength on Union Township ground; Penn's thirteen are counted and their naming stands as a named gap with the schedule named.

Sources: Indiana Historical Society, Early Black Settlements by County (St. Joseph County entry, by Andrea Sowle, 2014); Karst, Indiana Magazine of History, September 1978, pp. 252–268; Indiana Historical Bureau markers 71.1998.1 and 71.2003.1; this build's Population (the Penn tables, banked); Indiana Historical Bureau, “List of Indiana Emigrants to Liberia” and Indiana History Blog (the colonization fund, 1852–1865); Smith, “Schuyler Colfax: Whig Editor, 1845–1855,” Indiana Magazine of History; NARA M593 / FamilySearch 1870 schedules (named as settler). Read November 2026.