Schuyler Colfax — Speaker of the House, Vice President of the United States

1823 – 1885 · formed in South Bend from 1841

The fame: Schuyler Colfax is one of only two men in American history — John Nance Garner is the other — to have held both of the offices that stand next to the presidency: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, which he held for three terms through the Civil War years (1863–1869), and Vice President of the United States, which he held under Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1873). He served seven terms in the House from Indiana (1855–1869), helped found the Republican Party, and was for a decade among the most powerful men in Washington. His fall was as public as his rise: the Credit Mobilier scandal, in which congressmen held shares in a railroad construction company at favorable terms, destroyed his standing in 1872, cost him renomination, and ended his national career.

The tie, exactly: Colfax was not born here. He was born in New York City on March 23, 1823. His family moved west to New Carlisle, Indiana, in 1836, when he was thirteen, and in 1841 he moved to South Bend, where his stepfather, George W. Matthews, had become auditor of St. Joseph County and took the young man on as his deputy — a post Colfax held for some eight years. South Bend is where he was formed: it was here, in 1842, that he became editor of the pro-Whig South Bend Free Press, here that he bought the paper in 1845 and renamed it the St. Joseph Valley Register, and from here that he went to Congress in 1855. The full profile — the Register years, the congressional record, the scandal — stands in the People record of this history; this entry carries his national standing and the fact that South Bend made him.

The end: Colfax died on January 13, 1885, at Mankato, Minnesota, on a lecture tour, and is buried in South Bend's City Cemetery. His son, Schuyler Colfax III, was mayor of South Bend from 1898 to 1901.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Society, Colfax Papers — the biographical sketch: the 1836 move to New Carlisle, the 1841 move to South Bend, the deputy's post, the Free Press and the St. Joseph Valley Register.
2. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress — the seven House terms, the three speakerships, the vice presidency.
3. Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame — the South Bend newspaper years.