The township years: North Liberty and Lakeville

1926 - 1945

The counting story: The modern fair dates itself from the townships, and even that date arrives with an argument attached, the kind this section prints rather than settles. When the fair marked its anniversary in 2001, its committee found the old written histories, kept in old fair programs, putting the first fair in 1927, which would have made 2001 the seventy-fifth; the head of the anniversary committee, Diana Kuhn, said the fair had actually begun in 1926. The programs' 1927 and the corrected 1926 are both in the record now, and a third count exists beside them: the fair directory lists the fair as founded in 1925 and its 2026 edition as the 101st anniversary. The fair's own celebrations settle which count the fair itself uses: its 100th fair fell in 2025, which is the 1926 start counted annually. The leg prints the bracket as [1925 to 1927], each number owned by its source, and uses the fair's own count, from 1926, in what follows.

North Liberty: The fair the 1920s revived was a township fair, built around a new teaching system: vocational agriculture and home economics had started in the township schools, and the fair was where the townships' students exhibited. It settled first at North Liberty, in the county's southwest, and its plant there was the town itself: the old Hinkel and Masonic buildings were used for exhibits, and cattle were shown in the street. Expenses were paid jointly by the Chamber of Commerce, the township schools, the Farm Bureau, the county commissioners and the county council, five payers for one fair, which tells the truth about the era's scale: the fair belonged to everyone because no one body could carry it alone.

Lakeville, and the Lions: The fair moved south to Lakeville in [1935 or 1936], the bracket standing because the Lakeville Lions Club's own history dates the move to 1935 and the fairgrounds' history walkthrough dates the Lakeville years from 1936. At Lakeville the livestock were housed in tents, the home economics projects shown at the elementary building, the beef cattle auctioned, and the amusement area ran a Ferris wheel, a Whip and a merry-go-round; the fair also used the Union Township High School and its grounds. The Lakeville fair was sponsored jointly by the St. Joseph County Agricultural Society and the Lakeville Businessmen's Association, and out of that sponsorship grew an institution that outlasted the Lakeville years: the Lakeville Lions Club, organized 28 June 1943 and chartered that August by the local businessmen and farmers who were involved with the fair, its charter president an officer of the Agricultural Society. The club became the fair's sponsor in 1944, a duty the Lions' history records newspaper articles verifying at the Lakeville fairs of 1944 and 1945, and it has run a food booth at the fair every year since 1944, through every move the fair has made since.

Lottery calves, ten cents: One entry in the fair's own timeline fixes the township fair's texture better than any summary: in 1941 Brother Leo, from Notre Dame Farms, formed a committee to purchase lottery calves, and admission was ten cents for adults and children over twelve. A religious brother running a calf lottery for a county fair, a dime at the gate, cattle in the street at one home and tents at the other: this is the county fair at its most local, a school year's worth of farm teaching judged in public for a dime, and it is also, read plainly, the modern 4-H fair in embryo, the township club system already doing the work the next articles watch it formalize.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, fair anniversary account (2001), as indexed in the Michiana Business Review Library and ProQuest record (the old programs' 1927 first fair; Diana Kuhn's correction to 1926).
2. cofairs.com, St. Joseph County 4-H Fair listing (the directory's count: founded 1925, the 2026 fair as 101st anniversary).
3. Round the Bend Now and Then, fairgrounds walkthrough (October 2026) (North Liberty 1926 to 1935; Lakeville from 1936 to 1945).
4. Lakeville Lions Club, club history, adapted from the 70th anniversary talk of PDG Paul Russell (August 2013) (the move to Lakeville dated 1935; the joint sponsorship by the Agricultural Society and the Lakeville Businessmen's Association; the club organized 28 June 1943 and chartered 11 August 1943; the charter president an Agricultural Society officer; the Lions' sponsorship from 1944 and the food booth kept since 1944; the Lakeville fairs of 1944 and 1945).
5. St. Joseph County 4-H Fair, About page (vocational agriculture and home economics in the township schools; the North Liberty plant, the Hinkel and Masonic buildings and cattle in the street; the five expense payers; the Lakeville plant, tents, the elementary building, the auction, the Ferris wheel, Whip and merry-go-round; the Union Township High School; Brother Leo's 1941 lottery calves; the ten cent admission).