South Bend's Great Fortunes: Made, Kept, Lost and Given Away

Wealth: Fortunes Made, Kept, Lost, and Given Away

South Bend's money has a shape, and it is top-heavy in a way Fort Wayne's is not. The first fortune was not made here at all in any lasting form: the fur trade's biggest local name ended in a documented debt workout, and the town itself was a small, fully priced speculation whose ledger survives. The industrial age then produced two of the largest manufacturing fortunes in Indiana — the wagon fortune of the Studebakers and the plow fortune of the Olivers — and a third, Vincent Bendix's, that was the largest of all at its peak and the most completely destroyed. The banking fortune of the Morris family carried the city's money through the Depression when the industrial fortunes were breaking, and in the present century the largest pools of private wealth seated in South Bend are once again pooled ones — a community foundation and family foundations — rather than any single family's account.

Every figure in this section is a figure somebody published: an estate valuation in a court record or a newspaper, a capitalization in a company history, a sale price in a newspaper of the day, a foundation's federal filing. Where sources disagree, both figures are carried. Where no figure was ever published, this section says so. Lore figures are identified as lore, with the earliest carrier found.

Part One: The Fur Trade and the Townsite

Part Two: The Industrial Fortunes

Part Three: The Banking Fortune

Part Four: The Modern Fortunes