The college at the lakes, in brief

26 NOVEMBER 1842 — 1879

The second engine arrived in the snow: On the afternoon of November 26, 1842, the Reverend Edward Sorin — a 28-year-old French priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross — reached South Bend with a party of Holy Cross brothers, lodged first at Coquillard's house, and rode out to the mission land at the lakes. The 524 acres were Badin's: the Bishop of Vincennes had come to hold them, and gave them to Sorin's congregation on one condition — that a college be built on them within two years. Sorin took formal possession the next day, November 27; the university's own histories carry both dates, the arrival and the possession. Seeing the two frozen lakes as one sheet of snow, he named the place for Our Lady of the Lake — L'Université de Notre Dame du Lac — and set about the condition. The Indiana legislature chartered the University of Notre Dame on January 15, 1844. Notre Dame has its own full section in this record; the Story of South Bend section needs only what the city felt of it: a permanent institution, growing for 180 years on the town's northern edge, in what is today the separate postal place of Notre Dame, Indiana, just outside the city line.

Two of its early facts shape the city and belong here. Sorin led the university until 1865 — the year South Bend itself became a city — and the school across those years was as much farm, seminary and boys' school as college, educating the sons of the region alongside its seminarians. And when the university's main building burned in 1879, it was rebuilt within the year, the new building crowned with the golden dome that became, within a generation, the most recognizable silhouette in northern Indiana. The university the town watched grow from a log mission school is today the second-largest employer in both the city and the county, with 6,086 employees by the city's 2017 accounting — larger than every surviving factory. The engine changed; the dependence did not.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame, institutional history and "The Spirit of Notre Dame" — Sorin's arrival on November 26, 1842 and the formal possession of November 27, the 524 acres and their origin as Badin's mission land, the two-year condition, and the charter of January 15, 1844.
2. City of South Bend reference history — Sorin's first lodging at Coquillard's house, the 1879 fire and the rebuilding within the year, and the university's employment rank (second in city and county, 6,086) from the city's 2017 comprehensive annual financial report.
3. notre-dame section, this record — the university from Sorin to the research institution, in full.