First Presbyterian Church: Organized May 3, 1834

Organized May 3, 1834, at the home of Horatio Chapin — first building 1836 — later buildings 1839, 1866, and 1888 — present church at 333 West Colfax Avenue, first service January 11, 1953

The beginnings: Presbyterian history in South Bend begins, by Howard’s account, in 1831, when Horatio Chapin and William Stanfield organized the first union Sunday school in a log school house. Chapin had come from Detroit in 1831. The church itself was organized three years later: on May 3, 1834, families, husbands and wives with their children, met in the house of Horatio Chapin, on Michigan Street near LaSalle Avenue, to form the pioneer church. The Rev. M. M. Post of Logansport officiated as moderator, and John McConnell of Crawfordsville was elected the first elder. At a second meeting on August 17, 1834, more families united with the church and the Lord’s Supper was celebrated; on the following day Horatio Chapin was elected an elder.

The first pastor: For over a year the congregation was without a pastor, holding services in private houses and in the log school house, and in the upper rooms of Chapin’s two-story building on Michigan Street, where the first Sabbath school was organized with Chapin as superintendent and twelve scholars. The first pastor, the Rev. Alfred Bryant, preached to them in October 1835. Bryant was a Princeton graduate sent out by the Board of Home Missions, which paid two-thirds of his salary; with his own hands he planed and sawed lumber and prepared seats and a pulpit for the flock. Bryant did not take formal charge until 1843 in Howard’s printed pastor list, the intervening years being supplied by visiting and missionary preaching; the pastors after him run George Gordon (1844), Robert R. Wells (1844–46), A. A. Kerr, Justice V. Olmstead, A. Y. Moore (1849–61), James C. Brown, Walter Forsyth, and on to Henry Webb Johnson, called in 1889.

The buildings: The Hon. Samuel Hanna of Fort Wayne donated a lot at Lafayette and Water streets, and in 1836 a small frame church, 26 by 46 feet, was erected there; its first bell was of Spanish make, and a second bell, cast in New York in 1838, was still owned by the church in 1907. The location proving not central enough, a second church was built in 1839 on Main Street, on the next lot south of the later Y.M.C.A. building. A third church, of brick, with a spire 145 feet tall, rose in 1866 at Lafayette and Washington streets, built under the Rev. Walter Forsyth. In 1884 the church celebrated its semi-centennial over three days, reviewing the fifty years since 1834. Under the Rev. George T. Keller the brick church was leveled in 1887 and a stone church planned and begun; Keller died as the work commenced, the congregation worshipped for a year in the Y.M.C.A. building without a pastor, and the stone edifice at 101 South Lafayette Boulevard was completed in 1888. That fieldstone building, in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 as the Former First Presbyterian Church. The cornerstone of the present church, at 333 West Colfax Avenue, designed by Harold A. Waggoner, was laid in 1951; the building was completed in 1953 and the first service held on January 11 of that year. The congregation marked 190 years on May 3, 2024.

The wider Presbyterian presence: Howard’s 1907 survey names, besides the First Church, the Trinity Presbyterian Church at North St. Peter Street and East Colfax Avenue, the Westminster Presbyterian Church at North Scott and West Lindsey streets, and the Hope Presbyterian Chapel on South Leer Street; a Presbyterian building moved to the northwest part of the city in 1898 was in use as the Westminster church. The South Bend Area Genealogical Society’s church crosswalk carries the Second Presbyterian Church forward as Sunnyside Presbyterian Church, and the Trinity Presbyterian Church into Sunnyside as well. Sunnyside Presbyterian Church, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), worships at 115 South Frances Street.

Sources:

1. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), Sec. 2, printing the church’s own published history — the May 3, 1834 organization, the August 17, 1834 communion, Bryant, the 1836, 1839, and 1866 buildings, the 1884 semi-centennial, the pastor list, and the 1907 Trinity, Westminster, and Hope congregations.
2. First Presbyterian Church of South Bend, “Celebrate the Journey” excerpts in the church newsletter (June 2024) — the May 3, 1834 date, Chapin’s home, the five locations, and the first service at 333 West Colfax Avenue on January 11, 1953.
3. University of Notre Dame, Building South Bend, properties ND-SB-00257 and ND-SB-00169 — the 1834 founding, the 1836 frame church, the 1888 stone edifice, and the 1951–53 Waggoner building.
4. National Register of Historic Places, Former First Presbyterian Church, 101 S. Lafayette, listed June 5, 1985 — the 1888 building and its architects, J. P. Bailey and Christopher Fassnacht.
5. South Bend Area Genealogical Society, Saint Joseph County Church Records crosswalk — Second Presbyterian and Trinity Presbyterian carried into Sunnyside Presbyterian.