Sources for South Bend History

The open ledger: what remains unsettled, and what would settle it

As of November 2026

This history was built to name its gaps rather than fill them, and its notes close with more than a hundred. Each group names its settling source. Nothing below is asserted; everything below is owed.

Behind the newspaper doors: The largest class stands in the city's own papers, whose full runs are not in the free record — the Tribune and the News-Times survive whole only on microfilm at the public library and behind the university's NewsBank door at the Hesburgh Libraries. There stand: the full text of the Chicago Daily Tribune's 12 September 1923 report "Negroes Leave South Bend in Fear of Klan"; the Goniec Polski's founding and closing years, for which the Library of Congress newspaper directory is the named pull; the 1917 streetcar strike's chapter (CERA Bulletin 132, pages 42–45, and the 1917 press); the First World War home-front figures — registration-day totals, the alien-enemy registration, the Red Cross Second War Fund result — in the News-Times of 1917–19; the autumn-1918 influenza toll for the city itself, in the city papers of October–November 1918 and the State Board of Health's own record; and the full rolls of the eight fire-department dead named on the Seitz Park memorial stone, of which only one name was reached in coverage — the stone itself, photographed or transcribed, settles it.

Behind the directory runs: A second class stands in the city directories and license dockets at the public library: the saloon-era peak count, which this record deliberately never invented; the motor courts of Lincolnway West, old U.S. 31 and Route 933, court by court; the Jefferson Hotel's own record; the Seahorse's street addresses; Ricketts' founder and dates, with the Indiana incorporation records; the H. D. Lee factory's closing year, in the later Polk directories; the Wheel Horse plant's course after the 1986 Toro sale; and the Elwood Shopping Plaza's purchase and demolition by the city, reached this cycle only at second hand.

In the institutions' own keeping: A third class belongs to bodies that keep their own records: the Elks' Grand Lodge institution list, which alone settles Lodge No. that closed in August 2024 is St. Louis's museum, a different institution, and its closing is not imported here; the Guinness register and the Tribune's post-event coverage, for the Dog Man gathering of 9 December 2025, whose adjudicated result no source reached records; the North District of Indiana's docket in case 3:21-cr-64, for the Housing Authority defendants' resentencing after the Seventh Circuit's December 2025 reversal; and the Hoosier Lottery's winners roll, for the one-million-dollar Match 5 ticket sold at the Olive Expo Food Mart in the 29 April 2026 Powerball drawing — its 180-day claim window closed 26 October 2026 with no claim story in the record reached.

In the archives: A fourth class is archive-only: the Air Force case file behind the Kloth entry, on NARA microfilm T-1206 and Fold3's indexed Blue Book record; the county's own Article XIII return of 4 August 1851, in the Secretary of State's abstract and Dorothy Riker's Indiana Election Returns at the State Library; the 1851 Powell pamphlet's full text, at the Library of Congress; the Superior Court order books and LaPorte County's records of 1897–1900 behind the crime record's earliest chapters; the GLO field notes behind the valley townships' surveyors; Waterson's 1994 library history, undigitized, for the Castle's architect and the bookmobile's retirement; and the census county tables of 1850–1940 on HathiTrust, behind the farm series' missing front half.

Still running, in the world: And a last class is not archival at all — matters whose record is still being written: the State Theatre negotiation and the Administration Building's conversion, carried in this fragment's entries above; the art museum's thirty-six months, running to about August 2029; the East Race's works, to 1 May 2027; Tippecanoe Place's course after its restaurant's closing in January 2026; the former College Football Hall of Fame building's present state, unestablished since its vacancy; the Downtown 2045 Plan's course in the Common Council, to which the Plan Commission's Resolution 26-2 of 16 February 2026 submitted it for consideration and action — no Council adoption stands in the record reached; and Tess Gunty's novel Honeydew, announced by her publisher's speakers bureau for the fall of 2026 and still forthcoming in the record reached at this writing — the fall runs to about 21 December 2026, and the book's appearance, when it comes, closes the Authors account's one open re-check. These are the update cycle's first items, because they will not wait for it.

Sources:

2. City of South Bend Plan Commission, Resolution No. 26-2 (PC#0291-26), passed 16 February 2026 — the Downtown 2045 Plan approved and "submitted to the South Bend Common Council for their consideration and action."
3. Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau — Tess Gunty's Honeydew "will be released in Fall 2026," the publisher's own statement, standing as of November 2026.
4. Hoosier Lottery releases for the 29 April 2026 Powerball drawing — the Olive Expo Food Mart named among the $1 million Match 5 sellers; the drawing's claimed winners named in the Lottery's releases do not include the South Bend ticket.