The Historic Pageant of St. Joseph County, 1916

October 3–5, 1916 · Springbrook Park

The occasion: Indiana's centennial of statehood in 1916 was kept county by county, and St. Joseph County kept it as a pageant — the era's civic theater, in which a community acted its own history outdoors before itself. The Historic Pageant of St. Joseph County played three days, October 3, 4, and 5, 1916, at Springbrook Park, under the Indiana Centennial Incorporated Association, with F. A. Miller as county chairman and the county headquarters at the Chamber of Commerce in South Bend. The pageant committee was chaired by F. B. Barnes; Henry F. B. Roney directed; the pageant book was edited and compiled by Mrs. W. K. Lamport; and the incidental music came from the Pullman Band of Chicago, fifty pieces. The printed program apologizes that the cast is too large for its names to be printed — the pageant's scale is its own crowd figure, stated by its makers.

The scenes: The pageant ran the county's whole story, from a scene on the bank of the St. Joseph River set before 1675 — Father Marquette passing on his last journey, the episode staged by the University of Notre Dame under Professor Emmett Lanihan — through the pioneers, to whom the program is dedicated, and on to the present. It belonged to a statewide season: the state centennial director's report counted forty-five county and local pageants in 1916, seen, by his estimate, by 250,000 people — the estimate is the director's, printed here as his. South Bend's makers credited Judge Timothy E. Howard, the county's historian, among those to whom the pageant's success was due. The 1916 pageant is the documented ancestor of the city's later birthday parties: when the Chamber of Commerce planned the 1923 centennial of the founding, its souvenir volume pointed back to the homecoming season of 1916 as the model of what the city could mount.

Sources:

1. The Historic Pageant of St. Joseph County, Oct. 3-4-5, 1916 — the printed pageant book, edited by Mrs. W. K. Lamport (Indiana Memory / Internet Archive) — dates, officers, director, band, scenes, and the unprintable cast.
2. Indiana Memory, Indiana State Library — the program record fixing the venue at Springbrook Park, South Bend.
3. Ray E. Boomhower, "Celebrating Statehood: The Indiana Centennial" (2025) — the state commission's pageant season and Director Walter C. Woodward's report of forty-five pageants and an estimated 250,000 spectators.