The farmers' institutions: Grange, institutes, insurance, bureau, extension

1877 — present

The county organized itself as thoroughly as it farmed: Beside the fair's societies, the county's farmers built a full set of institutions of their own, and Howard's 1907 volume inventories them. The Farmers' Mutual Fire Insurance Company of St. Joseph County was organized on August 25, 1877, on the assessment principle — every loss paid by pro rata assessment on the members — and "the farmers of the county have secured insurance for their property at actual cost"; its incorporators were the same names that run the fair boards and the drainage petitions, Samuel Bowman, Aaron Jones, the Rupels, the Rockhills. The Grange gave the county a place in a national order out of proportion to its size: St. Joseph Valley Grange, No. 584, "has been most successful from the beginning," and in Aaron Jones — the Penn Township farmer who appears in this record as incorporator, drainage man, and fair man — the county "has frequently furnished the master for the Indiana State Grange; and for several years Mr. Jones was the most efficient master of the National Grange," in Howard's judgment the man through whom "the farmers of the United States have become a living force in shaping the internal policy of the nation." The county's Pomona Grange, No. 31, stood over the locals, and the order's membership runs through the biographies as a normal mark of a substantial farm family — the mint grower Jerry Woodward and his wife "associated with the Grangers," the Portage Township farmer Joseph Eckman a member of the St. Joseph Valley Grange.

The Farmers' Institutes took a full week each fall or winter, "schools, in which study and recreation have been combined," with lecturers from Purdue; the institutes Governor James A. Mount and his wife attended were, in 1907, still "treasured in the memory of all the people of the county." The St. Joseph County Horticultural Society (1892) is carried in the orchard entry. Quinn's survey of 1916 adds the newest form of his day: a Scientific Agricultural League "but recently formed in this county" for "the study of scientific farming," alongside the farmers' short courses and institutes. The twentieth century's two permanent institutions arrived on the national pattern. The Indiana Farm Bureau federation dates its founding to March 25, 1919, built from the start on county bureaus in all ninety-two counties; the St. Joseph County Farm Bureau's own corporation dates its founding to 1945–46 in its modern filings, and the bureau keeps its office at 5032 Miami Street in South Bend today.

The cooperative extension service put a county agricultural agent in the courthouse at South Bend: the U.S. Department of Agriculture's directories of extension workers name Eugene C. Bird as St. Joseph County's agricultural agent in the list of March 1, 1930, and still in post, at the courthouse, in 1941 — the agent's start year in this county was not established in the directories consulted, and is named here as a gap. Purdue Extension's county office, at 125 South Lafayette Boulevard, runs the county's agriculture, 4-H, and homemaker programs today, and its 4-H program is the fair's working partner — the institution through which the county fair of the last entry exists at all.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), agricultural societies chapter, sections 3–5, and biographical sketches — the Farmers' Mutual Fire Insurance Company (organized August 25, 1877; incorporators; assessment principle); St. Joseph Valley Grange No. 584 and Aaron Jones's state and national masterships; Pomona Grange No. 31 and its officers; the Farmers' Institutes and Governor Mount's attendance; Grange membership in the Woodward and Eckman sketches.
2. E. J. Quinn, "Soil Survey of LaPorte, St. Joseph, and Bartholomew Counties" (1916) — the Scientific Agricultural League recently formed, farmers' institutes, and short courses.
3. Indiana Farm Bureau centennial account (Hoosier Ag Today, March 25, 2019) — the federation's founding on March 25, 1919, as the Indiana Federation of Farmers' Associations, and its county-bureau structure; the St. Joseph County Farm Bureau's South Bend address and its founding year as carried in its nonprofit records — 1945 in one compilation, October 1946 in another.
4. U.S. Department of Agriculture, List of Extension Workers (March 1, 1930) and the Office of Cooperative Extension Work directory of 1941 — Eugene C. Bird, county agricultural agent for St. Joseph County, headquarters South Bend (the courthouse, in the 1941 listing).
5. Purdue Extension – St. Joseph County (extension.purdue.edu) — the county office at 125 South Lafayette Boulevard and its present agriculture, 4-H, and homemaker programs.