South Bend, Indiana · 19th century
1860s
59 dated events in 1860s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
19th century 59 dated mentions
1860s
- 1860–1861The approach of war · a pointer
On the eve: The antebellum record closes where the census of 1860 leaves it: a county of 18,455 people, eighty-eight of them Black, living under a constitution that forbade their coming and a community that had tripled anyway; a courthouse that had heard the fugitive question argued to discharge, twice, eleven years before…
- 1860–1867William Gibson: a photographer of 1860, on both sides of the city line
The career: William Gibson learned photography in 1860 — so his sketch in Chapman's 1880 county history says, at pages 915–916; the sketch does not name the town where he learned, a gap the Indiana Photographers Project itself flags, though the biographies around his are South Bend men.
- 1861The first company, and the first martyr · the 9th Indiana's three-months men
The first company left from the Lake Shore depot on Friday, 19 April 1861, four days after the courthouse meeting: Chapman calls it "the first volunteer company from Northern Indiana to take up its line of march."
- 1861The militia tradition · the county answers, April 1861
On 15 April 1861, three days after Fort Sumter, a mass meeting filled the courthouse at South Bend, and the county began raising companies.
- 1861–1864The 15th Indiana · thirty-eight of the county's men
The 15th's county companies left a complete little ledger of loss: St. Joseph County men served in the 15th Indiana from its organization in 1861 — Company B's papers survive among the county's Civil War records at the Notre Dame Archives, order books and morning reports included.
- 1861–1865The Civil War at home · the meetings, the aid societies, and the machinery of the draft
The war began in South Bend on a Monday evening in the courthouse: On 15 April 1861 , three days after Sumter, a war meeting filled the old courthouse with Dr. John A. Henricks presiding and speeches by Schuyler Colfax, Ariel E. Drapier, William Miller, William G. George, Andrew Anderson, and Captain William F. Lynch…
- 1861–1865The 9th Indiana (three years) · Shiloh takes Captain Houghton
When the 9th reorganized for three years, the county's company went back under a new captain: The three-years 9th Indiana was mustered at La Porte on 5 September 1861, again under Milroy, with the county's company commanded by Captain James Houghton .
- 1861–1865The 29th Indiana · Colonel Miller of South Bend
The 29th was a La Porte regiment with a South Bend colonel and South Bend companies' worth of this county's men: Organized at La Porte and mustered on 27 August 1861, the 29th Indiana went out under Colonel John F. Miller of South Bend .
- 1861–1865The 48th Indiana · the regiment nearest the county's heart
Three full companies of the 48th were St. Joseph County's own: The 48th Indiana was organized at Goshen between 5 December 1861 and 28 January 1862 under Colonel Norman Eddy of South Bend .
- 1861–2026McDonald Studio: the house of 1861, and its 165 years
The founder: Albert J. McDonald was born in Rochester, New York, in 1841, came to South Bend at nineteen, and in 1861 purchased the photograph studio that carries his name still.
- 1862The homecoming that happened in Indianapolis, 1865
The Seventy-third Indiana was mustered into service at South Bend on August 16, 1862, under Colonel Gilbert Hathaway, its Company C raised in this county; the Eighty-seventh was organized at South Bend the same month and accepted at Indianapolis on August 31, leaving for the front the same day…
- 1862Camp Rose · two regiments organized on the fairgrounds
In the summer of 1862 South Bend was a regimental rendezvous: On the county fairgrounds the city kept Camp Rose, and there the 73rd Indiana Infantry was organized and mustered into United States service on 16 August 1862.
- 1862The succession of lodges: 294, Germania 301, Portage 675
Chapman records South Bend Lodge No. 294, instituted in 1863, meeting the first Friday of the month, and Germania Lodge No. 301, instituted in 1862, which "conducts the services in the German language," meeting the first Thursday, with John Klingel as its master in 1880.
- 1862–1865The 73rd Indiana · mustered at South Bend, and the stand at Decatur
The 73rd was mustered into service on South Bend's own ground, 16 August 1862, and its colonel died at the head of Streight's raiders: The regiment went out under Colonel Gilbert Hathaway , with Company C raised in this county.
- 1862–1865The 87th Indiana · organized at South Bend, cut in half at Chickamauga
The 87th was organized at South Bend on 28 August 1862 and mustered at Indianapolis three days later: It went out under Colonel Kline G. Shryock, with Company K and one or two other companies from this county.
- 1862–1865The 21st Battery · the county's artillery, from Chickamauga to Nashville
The 21st Battery, Indiana Light Artillery, was made up principally from St. Joseph and La Porte counties: Organized and mustered at Indianapolis on 9 September 1862 under Captain William W. Andrew, the battery went to Kentucky against Kirby Smith, fought at Carthage, Tennessee, at Hoover's Gap, at Chickamauga , and in…
- 1863Birdsell Manufacturing Company — the clover huller
The New York business lost money on western freight and markets, and Birdsell moved the work to South Bend: he built shops here in 1863 and moved in April 1864, on the standard biography.
- 1863Stephenson Underwear Mills — from the Staley woolen mill
Wool first, then underwear: The line begins with the A. C. Staley Woolen Mill, established on the East Race in 1863 and grown by 1889, the year of Staley's death, into a complex of buildings carried on by his son Marion and other stockholders — among them the four Stephenson brothers, who had started as salesmen for the company.
- 1863A. C. Staley and the Stephenson brothers — wool first, then underwear
The founding: The line begins with the A. C. Staley Woolen Mill, established on the East Race in 1863 and grown by 1889, the year of Staley's death, into a complex of buildings carried on by his son Marion and other stockholders — among them the four Stephenson brothers, who had started as salesmen for the company.
- 1863Wool first: the river mills and the underwear trade
The mill that lasted rose on the same race in 1863 — the A. C. Staley Woolen Mill, drawing power, the National Register documentation notes, from a flume between the race and the river.
- 1863–1932The First National Bank of South Bend — Charter No. 126
The charter: The First National Bank of South Bend was organized on 5 September 1863, in the first year of the national banking system, by Charles N. Culver, Thomas S. Stanfield, John A. Henricks, Ethan S. Reynolds, John Reynolds and Ransom Hubbard, with capital of $100,000.
- 1864–1865The last regiments · the hundred-days men of the 138th and the one-year men of the 155th
The county's war ended as it began, with companies raised for the emergency of the season: The 138th Indiana was a hundred-days regiment of 1864, mustered into service on 27 May 1864 under Colonel James H. Shannon, with Company H of St. Joseph County…
- 1864–1865The 12th Cavalry · Company H against Forrest and the guerrillas
Company H was the county's cavalry company, and its war was the railroad war in Alabama: The 12th Indiana Cavalry was organized at Kendallville on 1 March 1864 under Colonel Edward Anderson.
- 1864–1866The 128th Indiana · the Ninth District's regiment, from Atlanta to Franklin
The 128th was recruited across the Ninth Congressional District in the fall and winter of 1863, with St. Joseph County's men in its ranks and its reunion papers kept at Notre Dame: The regiment rendezvoused at Michigan City and was mustered into service on 18 March 1864, leaving on the 23rd by rail for Nashville and…
- 1865A city in the month of peace
South Bend became a city in the spring the war ended: On May 22, 1865 — six weeks after Appomattox — the town incorporated as a city, taking for its motto the single word "Peace," and on June 5 it held its first city elections, choosing William G. George as its first mayor.
- 1865The carriage of Lincoln's last ride stands in South Bend
The barouche: The carriage Abraham Lincoln rode to Ford's Theatre on the night of his assassination, 14 April 1865, is a Studebaker, and it stands in South Bend.
- 1865–1884The first mayors: the doctor, the poet, and the oldest man
William G. George (1865–1868): The first administration was the incorporation itself. George's government organized a city out of a town's machinery — its first council, its first ordinances, its first health officer — and in December 1866 carried the annexation of Lowell across the river.
- 1865–1907The Lafayette Avenue House: National, St. James, Windsor
The Lafayette Avenue house was a one-story frame building when President Whitten — the town's hotel investor of the period, father of the city engineer William M. Whitten — bought it from George Knoblock on 13 July 1865.
- 1865–1909The count of the transformation
Chapman, writing in 1880, records that the sales of the city's manufacturers in 1865 reached $565,000 — at wartime double values, he warns — that the products annually made would by 1880 reach $5,000,000, and that 2,500 men found constant employment in the manufactories.
- 1865–1946The homecomings
1865, at the record's size: The first homecoming is the one this record can document least ceremonially.
- 1865–2025The seats of government: rented rooms, Oliver's city hall, the tower, and the school building
From incorporation in 1865 until 1902 the government of a growing industrial city worked out of rented and borrowed space around downtown — offices over stores and theaters, and for a time a two-story building at 217 West Jefferson Boulevard that served as city hall before 1902 and stood, in later years as offices and…
- 1865–todayThe Common Council: nine seats, a century and a half
At the first city election, on 5 June 1865 — two weeks after the incorporation vote carried 286 to 194 — South Bend's voters chose a mayor and a Common Council together, and the council has sat ever since as the city's legislative body: it passes the ordinances, appropriates the money, fixes the salaries of the police…
- 1866Landmark acts III: the annexation wars
The easy century: For its first hundred years the city grew the ordinary way, taking in ground as it filled: Lowell in 1866, eighteen months after incorporation, and thereafter the platted additions at its edges, decade by decade.
- 1866The Northeast: Sorinsville's heirs
The ground annexed as the Fourth Ward in 1866 — Lowell's north end, Sorinsville and the farmland between the city and the college — is the city's Northeast neighborhood today: its organized life is the oldest continuous neighborhood machinery in South Bend.
- 1866Before the regime: sickness met at home
There was no health officer until 1866, no board of health in the record until later, and no hospital until the Sisters of the Holy Cross opened St. Joseph's in 1882; the Hospitals record of this history carries that institutional story, and this entry stands at pointer size to mark what it meant for epidemic disease.
- 1866The health office: from first officer to county department
The Government record of this history carries the office's founding: one of the acts of South Bend's first city government, in 1866, was Mayor George's appointment of the physician Louis Humphreys as the city's first health officer — Humphreys, who would himself be mayor from 1868 to 1872…
- 1866–todayThe Grand Trunk down Division Street
The second trunk line ran down the middle of a city street for sixty years: The Grand Trunk's predecessor was chartered by Indiana in 1866 to build from the Michigan line west through South Bend toward Chicago, and the city — itself a stockholder in the enterprise…
- 1867St. Joseph’s Academy — the Hub of the Sisters’ Web
The Notre Dame Archives’ Extracts of Brother Aidan carry a council entry of March 26, 1867 allowing Brother Peter of Alcantara “for the Academy of St. Joseph, South Bend” — the Academy standing in the Holy Cross record by that year.
- 1867–1921The trade at sampled years: what the directories actually show
Holland's South Bend directory of 1867 carries two names under its classified heading "Photograph Galleries": William Gibson and A. McDonald.
- 1867–2005The keeper of the story: a historical society of 1867
The Northern Indiana Historical Society was established in 1867, two years after the city's incorporation, and stands as the second-oldest historical society in Indiana.
- 1867–todayThe South Bend Community School Corporation
The corporation itself, the South Bend Community School Corporation, dates its establishment to 1867. It is the oldest and largest school corporation in St. Joseph County.
- 1868The factory city
In one generation the mill town became a factory city of the first rank: The year 1868, which gave South Bend its two great incorporations, also brought its third: Leighton Pine arrived from the Singer Manufacturing Company's New York office to build a cabinet works on the East Race, making the wooden cabinets in…
- 1868Cabinets for the world's sewing machines
The wooden half of a world machine, made here: The Singer cabinet works on the city's west side — built where the black walnut grew, begun in 1868 under Leighton Pine…
- 1868Leighton Pine — Singer's man, and the works he kept in South Bend
In the 1860s the Singer sewing machine sat in a wooden cabinet that Singer bought on contract; standing in the center of the black walnut country, South Bend drew the company's bids, and in 1868 Singer sent Pine, a cabinet worker from its New York office, to build the company its own works here.
- 1868John J. and Miles W. O'Brien — the lathe twins
The founding act: John J. and Miles W. O'Brien, identical twins born in Cork, Ireland, in 1868, founded their company in 1906 as the South Bend Machine Tool Company: one room, thirty by sixty feet, in the Dinan Building at Washington and Johnson streets, at $65 a month.
- 1868The cabinet paradox: the sewing machine's furniture
The Singer sewing machine sat in a wooden cabinet, and from 1868 Singer built those cabinets here — drawn, as the Businesses record tells it, by the black-walnut country the city stood in the middle of…
- 1868The Second St. Joseph Hotel, on Colfax Avenue
Chauncey Nichols opened it on 10 September 1868, with L. H. Packard as his clerk.
- 1868–1911Electrification: the power changes state
The South Bend Gas-Light Company was organized in January 1868 with a capital of $50,000 and its works at the foot of Jefferson Street; the city was first lit with gas on 1 December 1868, and by 1880 Chapman counts seven miles of main, 371 consumers, 119 public lamps and some 28,000 cubic feet consumed daily…
- 1868–1936The brake maker and the cabinet maker: Bendix and Pine
In 1868 the Singer company sent Pine, a cabinet worker from its New York office, to build it a works in South Bend, in the center of the black walnut country.
- 1868–1955The Singer cabinet works — the world's sewing-machine cabinets
In 1868 Singer sent Leighton Pine, a cabinet worker from its New York office, to build the company its own works here.
- 1868–todayMemorial Day: from the Grand Army's order to the West Side parade
On 5 May 1868 the order's commander-in-chief, John A. Logan, issued General Order No. 11 designating the 30th of May for decorating the graves of the Union dead, and the posts of the department carried the observance into every county seat in Indiana.
- 1869The Polish west side: four parishes and a city within the city
The Polish community made the west side: Polish families began settling South Bend in 1869, drawn by Oliver, Studebaker and Singer; they worshipped first at St. Patrick's, and by 1877 numbered 125 families there.
- 1869–1892The Directory Houses
The Emmet House stood at Franklin and South streets from 1869 to 1872. The Kunstman House, at 125 South Michigan, is listed 1871–72.
- 1869–1902The Medal of Honor: two recipients, neither by the usual road
He served as a private in Company G, 1st U.S. Cavalry, and earned the medal in the Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona, on 20 October 1869; the citation, in the Army's form for the Indian campaigns, reads in full: "Gallantry in action with Indians."
- 1869–1907The South Bend Woolen Company — a Mishawaka house on South Bend ground
The Monon Society's mill account dates the company's operations to 1869 and puts its mill on the east bank of the St. Joseph River between LaSalle and Colfax streets, in South Bend, producing principally woolen fabrics for men's wear — suiting and overcoatings.
- 1869–1953Alice Mannering: the first woman to run for mayor in Indiana
Alice Mannering (born Alice Mae Mandeville, 1869; died 1953): a trained nurse and, by 1917, president of the St. Joseph County Branch of Equal Suffrage.
- 1869–1953Alice Mannering: three and a half months a candidate for mayor
Alice Mannering (born Alice Mae Mandeville, 1869; died 1953): a trained nurse — her party's account credited her experience "in a great many of the leading hospitals in the country" — and, by 1917, president of the St. Joseph County Branch of Equal Suffrage.
- 1869–2026War Service Records: What Remains Open
1 (1869) — pages 102 and 188–255 passim, as the Wars section's log names them. This pass reached Terrell in the condensed one-volume edition, Indiana in the War of the Rebellion , and that edition argues the quotas in narrative but does not carry the county tables in a form the county's line can be taken from.
- 1869–todayThe Water Level Route: Lake Shore & Michigan Southern to New York Central
The first road to the bend became the great through route of the North: On 6 April 1869 the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana and its partners were consolidated as the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway — the Buffalo & Erie was absorbed on 22 June 1869…