South Bend, Indiana · 19th century
1820s
16 dated events in 1820s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
19th century 16 dated mentions
1820s
- 1820The fur traders: Navarre, Coquillard, Taylor
The town grew out of the fur trade, and kept its shape: The first permanent settler at the bend was Pierre Frieschutz Navarre, an educated Frenchman who arrived in 1820 as an agent of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company and built his cabin and trading post on the river near what is now downtown…
- 1820The French of the trading town
The town's first settler community was French: Pierre Frieschutz Navarre, who established his post at the bend in 1820, and Alexis Coquillard, who built the trading house, the mill race ambitions and the town plat itself, headed a French and French-Canadian trading community…
- 1820–1865The traders: the men the town grew on
An educated French-Canadian in the service of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, Navarre came up the St. Joseph River in 1820 and established the first trading post at the south bend of the river, on land that was still, in law and in fact, Potawatomi land — the county record's "1820…
- 1820–todayThe Pioneer Stock — the Navarre Cabin and What Survives of the First City
Pierre Freischutz Navarre, an agent of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company who came from Monroe, Michigan, built his cabin and trading post in 1820 on the north bank of the St. Joseph River, at what is now 123 West North Shore Drive, sited for the river, the Kankakee and the portage between them.
- 1821The county asylum: the poorhouse and its insane charges
The act of 1821 that provided for houses for the employment of the poor opened the county asylums to the insane as well — the county's own historical timeline of its county home states it in so many words — and in St. Joseph County the commissioners began, in 1831, by renting houses in South Bend for the destitute.
- 1822The French century upriver: Fort St. Joseph and the missions
Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary, founded Carey Mission in 1822 on the river near the old fort — a school and mission to the valley's Potawatomi, Michigan ground again, printed here because the treaty that ceded the Indiana valley was negotiated at "the Missionary Establishments upon the St. Joseph" six years later.
- 1822Rum Village: the name that outlived the village
Rum Village is the oldest named neighborhood ground in the city, and the only one whose name is a chief's: the Potawatomi village of Chief Torum — "Rum," in the rendering the record carries — stood on the ground southwest of the present downtown, north of West Ewing Avenue and west of South Main Street…
- 1822–todayRum Village: The Drink That Never Named It
The paper trail runs early: the missionary Isaac McCoy conversed with the village's people in the spring of 1822; the Keating expedition of 1824 saw Torum's village and its cornfields…
- 1823–1831Alexis Coquillard: the last of the traders
The accounts divide on the season of his settling, and the file prints the division: The Story of South Bend (1920) has him come to the post in 1823, aged twenty-eight, and buy out the business Navarre had established the following year…
- 1823–1885Schuyler Colfax: the city's vice president
Schuyler Colfax (1823–1885): South Bend's highest-reaching son, and the fullest political life this section holds.
- 1823–1885Schuyler Colfax — Speaker of the House, Vice President of the United States
He was born in New York City on March 23, 1823. His family moved west to New Carlisle, Indiana, in 1836, when he was thirteen, and in 1841 he moved to South Bend, where his stepfather, George W. Matthews, had become auditor of St. Joseph County and took the young man on as his deputy — a post Colfax held for some eight years.
- 1823–1987The Olivers: the plow, the presidency, and Copshaholm
James Oliver (1823–1908): the inventor. Born on 28 August 1823 at Newcastleton, Scotland, Oliver came to America in 1835, and in May 1855 bought a quarter interest in a South Bend foundry.
- 1826–1830The Michigan Road: the treaty strip and the survey
The road was bought with land before it was built with money: The Michigan Road — the state road from Madison on the Ohio River to Michigan City on Lake Michigan, by way of Indianapolis and South Bend…
- 1826–1833The taking, instrument by instrument: 1826, 1828, 1832, 1833
1826 — what Mississinewa did and did not take: The treaty line for this ground opens at the mouth of the Mississinewa on 16 October 1826 (7 Stat.
- 1826–1966The Studebakers: five brothers, a dead president, and the two who saved it
Henry Studebaker (1826–1895) and Clement Studebaker (1831–1901) opened the blacksmith shop at Michigan and Jefferson streets on 16 February 1852 on 68 dollars of capital.
- 1829–1830The Rumpus Over the Name: How South Bend Stayed South Bend
The documented core: the place's first post office, applied for in 1829, went onto the federal books as Southold — addressed, in the postal geography of the day, to Allen County, Indiana.