The insurance record: two mutuals

1836–1877 · THE COUNTY INSURES ITSELF

The first insurance company: The bucket town insured itself almost as soon as it was platted. In 1836, Howard's county history records, leading citizens of the town took a prominent part in organizing the first insurance company of St. Joseph County, the St. Joseph County Mutual Fire Insurance Company, chartered by an act approved in February 1837 (Local Laws of 1837, p. 211). It was a mutual — the policyholders were the company — and it is the whole of the documented insurance record of the town's first generation: no stock fire insurance office in South Bend appears in the record reached.

The farmers' mutual: The county's second documented fire mutual belongs to the farm townships rather than the city. On 25 August 1877 the Farmers' Mutual Fire Insurance Company of St. Joseph County was organized, Howard records in his section on the county's organizations. Between the two mutuals the insurance side of the fire record stands as the record gives it: a town mutual of 1836 and a farmers' mutual of 1877, and no more. The great factories insured in the commercial market — the Studebaker works carried only about a third of the loss of its 1874 fire, as the Major Events section records — but the companies that wrote that coverage are not named in the record reached, and are not named here.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 1 — the St. Joseph County Mutual Fire Insurance Company organized 1836, act approved February 1837 (Local Laws 1837, p. 211); the Farmers' Mutual Fire Insurance Company of St. Joseph County organized 25 August 1877.