South Bend, Indiana · 19th century
1880s
73 dated events in 1880s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
19th century 73 dated mentions
1880s
- 1880Oliver addenda — the 1880 count, and the power plant's dates
Six hundred men in 1880: The banked Oliver entry prints the 1876 plan — 400 men casting 300 plows a day — and states that a peak employment figure is not carried in the sources reached.
- 1880The Oliver works in 1880: the plant as a place
One works, described whole, stands for the system at its water-and-steam maturity: Chapman's 1880 history walks the Oliver Chilled Plow Works building by building, and it is the fullest single description of a South Bend factory as a working place that the nineteenth-century record gives.
- 1880Chapman's Roll of Honor, counted whole: two hundred and thirty names
The pull: Chapman's 1880 county history closes its war chapter with a Roll of Honor — the county's Civil War dead as the county itself compiled them fifteen years after Appomattox.
- 1880The bison question, tested on the record
The first witness is Chapman (1880), writing the county's natural history within living memory of settlement: "The buffalo which grazed upon the verdant prairies has been driven westward."
- 1880Wolves, panthers, and bears: the departed predators
The county's word: Chapman's 1880 chapter lists the black wolf and the black bear among the animals that went "with or before" the buffalo, and the panther with them; his rare-and-going list adds the catamount and the lynx.
- 1880The deer: from Chapman's rarity to the restored herd
The going: The Virginia deer stands in Chapman's 1880 chapter among the animals already effectively gone from the county — "the beautiful Virginia deer" in his list of the departed and the rare.
- 1880The wild turkey: gone by the new century, restored by release
The going: Chapman in 1880 already writes the turkey in the past tense of habit: it "has almost entirely disappeared" from the county, though "in an early day they were in abundance."
- 1880Chapman's water birds, and what the ditches did
The marsh birds in 1880: Chapman's bird list reads, in its water sections, like a manifest of the marsh world while the marsh still stood.
- 1880The river's fish in 1880: Chapman's list
The silence in it: Two absences in the 1880 list carry information.
- 1880The bald eagle's return: the county's first nests, 2015
The going, and the long absence: Chapman gives the bald eagle one measured line in 1880: "once quite common, now scarce," with well-preserved specimens in the county — the bird already passing from neighbor to museum piece.
- 1880The herons, and the rookery that is not here
The county's heron record, at its true size: What St. Joseph County does hold is Chapman's heron list of 1880 — the great blue heron, the least bittern, the green heron, the night heron, and the American bittern among the waders of the marshes, with the glossy ibis "seen here"…
- 1880North Main: Club Lido's building, Fiddler's Hearth, and the Madison Oyster Bar
One block, three eras: The two 1880 storefronts at 125–129 North Main Street hold a compressed century of the city's drinking.
- 1880The lodge buildings: from the Lincoln Block to North Main Street
In 1880 the Masons met in rented rooms in the Lincoln Block at 118 Michigan Street, and the Odd Fellows owned the better asset: Chapman notes that the Odd Fellows' order "owns a large and fine hall, underneath which are two store rooms and a number of offices, which yield a good revenue"…
- 1880–1889The petition, the 1883 law, and the school board's resolution
The 1920 civic history records that in 1880 "South Bend and a number of other cities sent in a petition to the legislature, requesting authority to establish a free public library, to be maintained by taxes," and that "this law was passed in 1883."
- 1880–1914The passenger pigeon over the county
It is a decline recorded in real time by a man who had heard the fuller version — the visits continuing, the numbers already thinned, in 1880, thirty-four years before the last pigeon on earth died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
- 1880–1923The historians, as authors
The 1880 county history that bears Chas. C. Chapman & Co.'s name was a Chicago subscription house's production — the first full history of the county, written by the trade's method.
- 1880–1929The working day
The Studebaker family's memory of the wagon trade's earlier generation, preserved in the 1880 county history, has the patriarch at forge and bench "from four o'clock in the morning until nine at night," and the youngest brother's verdict: "there was no ten or eight hour system then…
- 1880–1961Playland Park: the trolley park on the river
South Bend's amusement park began in 1880, on the standard trolley park logic of its era: a pleasure ground at the end of the line, on the St. Joseph River where Ironwood Drive and Lincolnway East meet, so that the fare to reach it paid for the ride twice.
- 1880–1972The prairie chicken: Chapman's warning, and the last bird
The warning, 1880: Of the prairie chicken Chapman wrote the most prophetic sentence in his natural-history chapter: the bird remained, but "if not carefully protected, must ere long follow the wild turkey, never to return."
- 1880–2005The otter: out by 1942, back by spread
The going: The otter stands in Chapman's 1880 chapter in the rare-and-going company, and the state's scientific record fixes its Indiana ending: protected by law in 1921, the river otter nevertheless declined through the early 1900s under unregulated harvest and habitat loss and "was believed extirpated from the state by 1942."
- 1880–2026Unresolved Crime Cases, 1880–1995
The Dice killing, 1880: Ephraim Dice's death outside Hughes' saloon on August 23, 1880, stands in Chapman where the Crime file left it: seven men arrested after the two-day examination before Justice Harbaugh, Charles Kelley and Andrew Pfaffenbach held to bail at $2,000 each, the others discharged, and Chapman closing mid-case.
- 1881–1899The Houses of the 1880s and 1890s: Bristol, Grand View, and the Depot House
At 122–124 South Main Street, Dr. Robert Harris and Edward M. Irvin erected a hotel in 1880, opened in 1881 by L. H. Packard as the European Hotel.
- 1881–1906The forty acres between the cities: the fair becomes Potawatomi Park
On 3 February 1881 the Northern Indiana Agricultural Society was formed to hold fairs on grounds to be purchased by the county under that act, organized as a stock company with shares at five dollars and no limit on their number.
- 1881–1921The laundries — a trade with no heading
Steam Laundry, at 112 East Jefferson Street, telephone 321, advertised itself "ESTABLISHED 1881" — the founding date the missing heading failed to record.
- 1882St. Joseph's Hospital: the Sisters' founding, 1881–1882
Saint Joseph Health System dates its own founding to what followed: in 1882 Saint Joseph's Hospital became, in the medical center's published words, the first institution in South Bend to care for the sick.
- 1882–1883The named companies of 1882 · South Bend Light Infantry and South Bend Veterans
When Indiana rebuilt its militia after the Civil War, South Bend stood in the first organization with two named companies: The Indiana Legion reorganization of 1882 gathered the state's independent companies into regiments, and the Military Department of Indiana's own history lists the South Bend Light Infantry and…
- 1882–1886The 1882 attempt and Van Depoele's cars: the first electric streetcars
The failure of 1882: South Bend's claim on electric traction begins with a failure, and the failure is documented first-hand in the state history of its electric railroads.
- 1882–1918The Grand Kankakee Marsh and the market gun
The drainage that ended the marsh — the ditching and dredging of 1882 to 1918 that straightened the Kankakee and emptied its wetlands into farmland — is told in the land file of this record; its faunal consequence is the subject of the entry that follows.
- 1882–1993The Big Four at Granger: the county's other New York Central line
One more Central line crossed the county's northeast corner without ever being South Bend's: The Elkhart, Niles & Lake Michigan Railroad built from Niles south to Granger in 1882, and the Cincinnati, Wabash & Michigan extended the line north from Granger to Benton Harbor in November of that year.
- 1883The other chilled plows — the Bissell and Economist works
Farr's 1883 directory names the other two, and they stand here at the size the directory gives them, which is all the record reached gives them.
- 1883The printers — the press as a business
The trade: The newspapers' editorial record belongs to this history's media pass; their printing firms' commercial record belongs here, and Farr's 1883 directory is its document.
- 1883Coal, and the carrying trades
No transfer heading: The directory carries no heading for transfer or storage companies in 1883, and the absence is printed as a finding: the function was served by other trades.
- 1883The shirt city: Wilson Brothers and the white dress shirt
Wilson Brothers, founded in Cincinnati in 1864 and headquartered in Chicago, began manufacturing in South Bend in 1883 on the second floor of the post office building, and in 1887 bought its factory ground from J. D. Oliver south of Sample Street on a recorded condition: within ten years the plant would employ 1,000 women.
- 1883The fashion floors: Robertson's, Wyman's, Ellsworth's, and Sax
Wyman's — George Wyman & Co. — was already in Farr's dry-goods list of 1883, at 107 and 109 North Michigan; it traded into the mall age and closed in 1972.
- 1883–1907The second rank — Howard's list and the directory's small headings
Iron and wood, 1883: Under Boiler Makers the directory carries one firm, "Mathews, Jonathan, 306 to 314 e Tutt" — Howard's list keeps the trade and spells the name "Matthews": the Matthews Steam Boiler Works, "long conducted by Jonathan Matthews," with the Hull Brothers' Boiler Company, Thaddeus M. Talcott's Boiler…
- 1883–1921The custom trades: milliners, dressmakers, and tailors
Farr's directory of 1883 — the city's ninth — lists eight milliners in its classified pages, every one a woman trading under her own name: Mrs. A. Barrett & Co., at 110 East Washington; Mrs. A. E. Berkley, at 124 North Michigan, advertising "millinery, hair goods, etc."; Miss May Bronner; Mrs. William Fox; Mrs. M. A. Fralick…
- 1883–1934The ice trade — lake ice by wagon
The dealers: Farr's 1883 directory gives the ice trade two houses under Ice Dealers: "Seek, George & Son, 121 n Main" and "Jackson & Wing, 105 n Michigan" — the OCR of the directory's text layer renders the first name "Seek," and it is printed as the directory carries it.
- 1883–1945Working women: sewing rooms, the sit-down, and the war
Behind the factory rows stand the tradeswomen of the directories: Farr's directory of 1883 lists eight milliners in its classified pages, every one a woman trading under her own name, and the Owners Roster carries the city's women proprietors at directory size across its whole run.
- 1883–1975Wilson Brothers — the shirt factory
South Bend's part began in 1883, when the company started manufacturing on the second floor of the post office building on South Michigan Street.
- 1883–2005The undertakers — from the university's coffin shop to McGann Hay
The trade in 1883: Farr's directory gives the undertaking trade three houses, and the same names stand under Furniture Manufacturers and Dealers — the era's standard pairing of the cabinetmaker's and the undertaker's trades: "Barmore, N. L., 126 n Michigan," "Knoblock Bros., 130 n Main," and "Liphart, C, 122 s Michigan."
- 1884–1914The boomtown mayors: Colfax's son and the eight-year man
George W. Loughman (1884–1888): Loughman (1846–1909) was, in the local historian's phrase, the busiest man in South Bend: freight agent for the largest railroad in the city, president of a building and loan association, president of his own life insurance company, and foreman of the Number One fire crew…
- 1884–1929The elevation fight: two Supreme Court cases and a viaduct
The city sued to compel the Terre Haute & Logansport to open its Calvert Street crossing, conform the roadbed to the street grade, and plank the crossing safe, under the franchise of 10 November 1884; an unperformed contract of 17 January 1902 for a steel viaduct at Elmira (Calvert) Street was in the case as well.
- 1884–todayThe Vandalia: the Pennsylvania's road from Logansport
The sixth road came up from the south, and it kept its own station to the end: The Terre Haute & Logansport Railroad finished its sixty-nine-mile Logansport–South Bend line in 1884, and the city granted its street-crossing franchise on 10 November 1884…
- 1885Horse cars: the first company, 1885
The charter and the first car: The South Bend Railway Company was chartered on 18 January 1885 — the date the Trains section records from the state's own journal — and streetcar service in South Bend began that spring on Washington Street.
- 1885The Touring Record
Taken together they state the record's plain conclusion: a city of South Bend's size has held a place on the American touring map continuously from 1885 to the announced season of 2026–27, and the place it holds is, as it has been since 1922, one room on Michigan Street.
- 1885The Catholic benefit societies
The Ancient Order of Hibernians, Division No. 1 of St. Joseph County, was founded in January 1885. The Catholic Knights of America stood in St. Paul's Branch No. 408, founded in September 1885 by the Rev. Michael Ph.
- 1885The Catholic orders: Columbus, Foresters, Catholic Knights, Hibernians
The Ancient Order of Hibernians came first: Division No. 1 of St. Joseph County was founded in January 1885, meeting the first and third Sunday afternoons, the Irish order at home in an Irish-German-Polish city.
- 1885–1933Ring Lardner — the Times years
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was born in Niles, Michigan, on 6 March 1885, twenty miles from this city, and South Bend gave him his start: in the fall of 1905 — on the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame's account, drawn from Jonathan Yardley's biography…
- 1885–1940The other interurban: the Northern Indiana Railway
The South Shore was the famous electric road, but it was not the only one — a second system tied South Bend to its Indiana and Michigan neighbors, and died a generation earlier: The system grew from the South Bend Railway Company, chartered 18 January 1885, whose October 1885 electric cars the Story of South Bend…
- 1885–2012The Lost Downtown — the Oliver Hotel, the Opera House, the Colfax
The family's other downtown monument went the same way a decade later — the Oliver Opera House of 1885, demolished in 1978.
- 1886Fifteen minutes of hail: the fair of 1886
The storm: The county fair held in 1886 is remembered in the county history not for anything exhibited at it but for the weather that hit it.
- 1886–1889Tippecanoe Place — the National Historic Landmark
The Architecture history in this record owns the house whole — Henry Ives Cobb's design, the 1886–89 build, the name's two documented theories, and the size the sources do not agree on (24,000 square feet in the restaurant-era accounts, 26,000 in the university's survey; both stand in Architecture's record).
- 1886–1889Tippecanoe Place — the Clement Studebaker House (1886–89)
Clement Studebaker bought the parcel in 1868 and lived in an earlier house on the site; in 1886 he moved that house to 202 South Scott Street — it is no longer extant — and began the mansion on the bluff.
- 1886–1920The paid department: organized 26 November 1886
On 26 July 1886 a committee sent out to examine paid fire departments in other cities reported in favor of the system in operation in Kalamazoo, and recommended for South Bend: one two-horse hose carriage, two one-horse carriages, one hook and ladder truck with a sixty-foot extension ladder drawn by two horses, and…
- 1886–1990Three congressmen promoted from the succession list
Samuel B. Pettengill (1886–1974): the congressman of the court-packing fight.
- 1887–1964Sister Madeleva: the president of Saint Mary's
Sister Mary Madeleva Wolff, C.S.C. (1887–1964): poet, medievalist, and for twenty-seven years the president of Saint Mary's College, across the road from Notre Dame in the community that shares South Bend's life.
- 1887–1964Sister M. Madeleva — the poet who built a college
Mary Evaline Wolff was born in Cumberland, Wisconsin, in 1887, graduated from Saint Mary's College in 1909, and took her doctorate at Berkeley in 1925.
- 1887–2026The stations: the roster, 1887 to the present eleven
Station 3 dates to 1887 on North Hill Street and went out of service in 1953.
- 1887–todayNotre Dame football — cross-reference
The pointer: The football team of the University of Notre Dame — its eras from 1887, its claimed and consensus championships, its Heisman Trophies, its stadium and its rivalries — is told whole in its own record, the Notre Dame Football leg of this build, the first running of the Team Histories baseline.
- 1888The Hungarian streets: Chapin, Thomas and Calvert
The Hungarians built their world one street west of downtown: Hungarian immigrants — many of them German-speaking — worshipped first at St. Patrick's and St. Mary's, shepherded from 1888 by St. Mary's pastor, Father Peter Johannes.
- 1888–1931Knute Rockne — the coach, cross-referenced
He was born in Voss, Norway, on March 4, 1888, and was brought to Chicago as a small child; Chicago raised him.
- 1888–2025The Churches as Buildings — a Survey
The former First Presbyterian Church at 101 South Lafayette Boulevard, at Washington, was built in 1888 to designs of J. P. Bailey, with Christopher Fassnacht as builder, for a congregation organized in 1834 with Horatio Chapin's aid.
- 1889The muck farms and the mint
What is documented here, on this ground, is dated 1889: Jerry R. Woodward, raised on a Michigan peppermint farm, came to St. Joseph County, Indiana, that year and put three hundred acres into peppermint with his brothers, then bought a second three-hundred-acre farm "principally devoted to the raising of peppermint,"…
- 1889The Pan-American delegation comes to dinner, 1889
The visit: The First International Conference of American States — the Pan-American Congress — sat in Washington from October 2, 1889, under Secretary of State James G. Blaine, and its delegates toured the United States between sessions.
- 1889Tippecanoe Place burns · 9 October 1889
The fire was discovered by Mrs. Studebaker at about two o'clock in the morning of 9 October 1889.
- 1889August Luckhaus: cabinet cards, and a trade that traveled
His South Bend imprint is on cabinet cards of the 1880s at 104 South Michigan Street; in 1889 he was at 101 South Michigan, over Coonley's Drug Store.
- 1889The women's clubs: the Literary Club, the Progress Club, and their circle
The Literary Club of 1889: Howard gives the clubwomen's institutions their own full passage.
- 1889–1896The Oliver Opera House rooms
There, on the fourth floor of the opera house, the South Bend Public Library opened to the public in 1889. Its first head librarian was Evelyn Humphreys, appointed in 1889 and serving until 1903, per the library's published history.
- 1889–1906The Gift Parks: Coquillard, Studebaker and Kaley
Alexis Coquillard, who "inherited the enterprise and public spirit, as he did the name, of his distinguished uncle, the founder of the city," gave Howard Park its four lots in November 1889 and offered the city something far larger: "a fine tract of ground, of nearly one hundred acres, on the east side of the corporation," for a new park.
- 1889–1970The club movement: the Literary Club, the Progress Club, and their circle
The Woman's Literary Club was organized in April 1889 by twenty-seven named women — Anna Thrush Fassett, Louise Taylor, Ellen Wade Colfax, Ada M. Studebaker, Harriet C. Studebaker, and Catherine E. Esmay among them.
- 1889–1984Stan Coveleski: The Hall of Famer Who Chose This Ground
Stanislaus Anthony Kowalewski was born July 13, 1889, in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, the youngest of five boys, four of whom played professional baseball; his brother Harry won 81 major-league games.
- 1889–todayThe sporting lives: the pitcher who stayed, the teacher who became Wooden, and the born-here champions
Stan Coveleski (1889–1984): the Hall of Famer who chose South Bend for his second life.
- 1889–todayThe directors
Evelyn Humphreys, the first head librarian, served 1889 to 1903. Virginia M. Tutt followed, 1903 to 1927; the Tutt Branch carries her name.