St. Joseph County, Indiana · 19th century
1850s
158 dated events in 1850s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
19th century 158 dated mentions
1850s
- 1850The population spine
Every count below was read in the census volumes themselves: Before the federal series opens, the town's growth is carried by local counts and the city history: about 100 people in 1834; 328 in 1835 and 756 in 1838, as the 1921 Polk city directory reports them; some 862 by the end of the 1830s, in De Kever's account…
Mishawaka
- 1850The series in full: the city census by census, 1850–2020
The whole table: Before the federal series opens, the town's growth is carried by local counts — about 100 people in 1834, 328 in 1835 and 756 in 1838 as the 1921 Polk city directory reports them, some 862 by the end of the 1830s in the city history's account, and 1,166 in 1840, again the directory's figure, which…
Mishawaka
- 1850The eras of growth, read off the numbers
A furnace town, a factory city, and then a staircase: The first era is the water-power town, and its rates are modest because the town was modest: 1,412 people in 1850, 2,640 in 1880…
Mishawaka
- 1850The Black population series, 1850–2020
The census counted Black South Bend from the first city return, and for seventy years it counted a small community in an immigrant city: In 1850 the enumerators found 18 free Black residents in South Bend — Indiana law counted no enslaved people, and the census's own columns show all 18 as free — 1.1 percent of the town.
South Bend
- 1850Joseph D. Oliver — the heir who ran it
He was born 20 August 1850 at Mishawaka, while the family still lived there, and began work in his father's firm at fourteen, cutting threads on nuts for seventy-five cents a day — a job he told a Tribune reporter in 1913 he had dreaded.
South Bend
- 1850Kamm & Schellinger of Mishawaka, the region's second brewery
The register text for the Mishawaka plant states the founding: "the Kamm & Schellinger Brewery was established in 1850 by John Wagner, who built a small brewery about one mile east of the center of Mishawaka on the banks of the St. Joseph River."
South Bend
- 1850–1851The penalty suit and the Supreme Court: Norris v. Crocker, 1851
322 (5 McLean 92), Circuit Court, District of Indiana, May Term 1850, Justice John McLean presiding and charging the jury on Prigg lines; verdict for Norris of $2,856 .
Lakeville
- 1850–1852The first train: October 4, 1851
West of the line, the building company was the Northern Indiana & Chicago Railroad, chartered 30 November 1850; its track ran from the state line through Elkhart, Osceola and Mishawaka to South Bend, and it opened the whole way on the day the first train reached Mishawaka…
Mishawaka
- 1850–1852The first train: October 1851
The railroad came to the bend from the east, along the river towns: The Northern Indiana & Chicago Railroad was chartered on 30 November 1850 to build west from the Michigan Southern's line at the Indiana state line toward Chicago.
South Bend
- 1850–1860The antebellum Black community, counted and named: twenty-nine in the county, none on this ground — and that is a count, not a silence
The count, whole: The 1850 census — the count this build's Population leg prints whole — enumerates twenty-nine free colored residents in St. Joseph County, seated in Centre, Penn, Portage and Union townships and in South Bend.
Granger
- 1850–1860The antebellum Black community counted: twenty-nine people, none in these townships, and the offers made to them
The count, as banked and re-verified against the census volume: the Seventh Census (1850), Table II, returns Clay Township 659 people and Harris Township 437, and returns both townships entirely white.
Granger
- 1850–1930The labor the works drew
The factories' growth can be read off the census curve, and the curve is this record's steepest: The Population section carries the series from the census volumes, and it is conformed here, not re-derived: 1,412 people in 1850; 2,640 in 1880; 5,560 in 1900; 11,886 in 1910; 28,630 in 1930.
Mishawaka
- 1850–1939Rose Hartwick Thorpe — the poet, by birth
Rose Alnora Hartwick was born in Mishawaka on 18 July 1850, the daughter of William Hartwick, a tailor and pioneer settler, and Mary Louisa (Wight) Hartwick.
Mishawaka
- 1850–1940The Census Series, as Used
The historical volumes on census.gov divide by their machinery: the 1850, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1930-state and 1950 parts carry OCR text layers, scrambled exactly where it matters — in the two-column minor-civil-division tables…
Granger
- 1850–1951Kamm & Schellinger of Mishawaka
Cross-reference, at pointer size as the checklist orders, never retold: the neighbouring city's house is the Kamm and Schellinger Brewery of Mishawaka — founded by John Wagner (the brewing record gives the founding as 1850…
Granger
- 1850–1951The boundary brewery: Kamm & Schellinger of Mishawaka
Kamm & Schellinger Brewing Company, Mishawaka: established by John Wagner on West 2nd Street — 1850 in the company's historical sketch, 1853 in the Tavern Trove chronology, both printed; purchased 1870 by Adolph Kamm (with Clemens Dick, as Dick & Kamm)…
Osceola
- 1850–2018Drainage — the Transformation, Its Instruments, and One Named Ditch
The state instrument story stands at county class: the Swamp Land Act of 1850 ceded swamp lands to the states; Indiana's ambitious 1869 drainage law authorized the Kankakee Valley Draining Company, which met bitter landowner opposition, dissolved, and saw the law repealed…
Lakeville
- 1850–2020The frame's long run: Clay and Harris townships, 1850–2020
The Seventh Census of 1850 is the first to print the two townships by name (Table II, population by subdivisions of counties): Clay Township held 659 people (368 males, 291 females) and Harris Township 437 (216 males, 221 females — a female majority on a frontier township's page).
Granger
- 1850–2020The census series, 1850–2020
The township series runs complete, 1850–2020, with the 1880 Mishawaka-inclusion caveat printed whole. A superseded transcription of the 2020 file, caught and corrected inside this build, is told as method in Part Five.
Osceola
- 1850–2024Composition, as each census printed it
The place's printed composition begins as a single line: in 1850 the townships were returned as entirely white (the county's 29 free colored residents lived elsewhere in it, as the township article prints), and for most of the record the counts that follow barely move.
Granger
- 1850–2024Composition as the record gives it: the foreign-born run and the race and Hispanic-origin run, census by census, with the question-changes flagged
The census first asked place of birth in 1850, and the run on this ground begins where the banked fragment's first-hand township work begins, in 1870: Penn Township — the township in its Penn-including-Mishawaka form, the only form the nineteenth-century volumes print…
Osceola
- 1851The railroad of 1851
"The coming of the Lake Shore railroad, in 1851, secured the stability of the little municipality." So Howard writes, and the National Register nomination repeats the name; the build chain underneath the name is printed whole because the 1851 builder was not yet the "Lake Shore."
New Carlisle
- 1851The railroad century opens
On October 4, 1851, the town's future changed gauge: The first steam locomotive entered South Bend that day on the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad — soon folded into the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern — tying the bend by rail to Toledo, Chicago and the east.
South Bend
- 1851The Germans: Arzberg's letters and the parish of St. Mary
The German community arrived by letter: between 1851 and 1854 some two hundred people — more than a tenth of the town — left Arzberg, in Bavaria, most of them for South Bend, drawn by the letters of those who had gone before…
South Bend
- 1851The county fair: the great recurring gathering
Its institutional history — the agricultural societies of 1841, 1851, and 1881, the 4-H corporation, the charters and reorganizations — is told whole in Farms & Crops and is not repeated here.
South Bend
- 1851The Hon. Thomas J. Wolfe: a Goodspeed sketch, at sketch strength
The sketch: Goodspeed's Pictorial and Biographical Memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties (1893) carries "Hon. Thomas J. Wolfe, of Walkerton" — a dealer in men's and boys' clothing, gent's jewelry, watches and the like, born 8 August 1851 in a log house near Ligonier, Noble County, son of Leonard and Lutitia (Martin) Wolfe…
Walkerton
- 1851West York: the seat before the town
Chapman: the West York post office was established in 1851 by C. W. N. Stephens, half a mile south of the townsite; in 1854 Stephens built the first house in Walkerton and its first store, on ground then "covered with a dense thicket," with no roads laid out.
Walkerton
- 1851–1852Article XIII (1851) — Text, Statewide Vote, and the County Count That Does Not Survive
Article XIII of Indiana's 1851 Constitution (§1), carried whole: contracts with any person coming in violation of §1 are void, and whoever employs such a person or "in any way encourages" them to remain is fined ten to five hundred dollars (§2); all fines under the article are appropriated "to Colonization purposes" (§3)…
Lakeville
- 1851–1855Before the rails: the hack road, and the road that does not run here
Before 1855, Walkerton's ground moved at a horse's pace on one road: the mail came by hack on the road from La Porte to Plymouth, and the West York post office — established 1851, half a mile south of the future townsite — was that road's institution here (the Story of Walkerton section leg carries the office and C. W. N. Stephens whole).
Walkerton
- 1851–1884The first store — C. W. N. Stephens, West York and Walkerton, 1851–1884
The post office designated West York, situated a half-mile south of the later townsite, was established in 1851 and kept by C. W. N. Stephens, its first appointee, who, Chapman records, "also had a grocery store, and still holds the position of Postmaster" in 1880…
Walkerton
- 1851–1887The proprietors: Jones, Hannah, Rupel, Place — and the postmaster before the town
It was kept by Mr. C. W. N. Stephens, who had established it in 1851, and was the first appointee" (the town's page).
Walkerton
- 1851–1893The Disabilities at Settlement Size, and the Repeal Course Whole
The 1851 Constitution confined suffrage to white males and said so outright (Art. II, §5: "No Negro or Mulatto shall have the right of suffrage").
Lakeville
- 1851–1907The township in the society's leadership
When the St. Joseph County Agricultural Society was reorganized at the courthouse on Saturday, April 19, 1851, the chairman of the meeting was George C. Merrifield of Penn Township…
Osceola
- 1851–1920Suffrage whole: the Indiana course, the county frame, and the tested local negative
The course, instrument by instrument: Indiana's suffrage movement is among the nation's earliest — its first women's rights convention met in 1851, three years after Seneca Falls, and Indiana suffragists presented the legislature's first petition for the ballot in 1859.
Granger
- 1851–1920Suffrage whole: the county frame, the editor, and the candidate the court ended
Granger has no mayor, no council, and in the suffrage years no village organization — so this item's true-size form is the county movement whole, tested for any woman of this ground inside it: Indiana's movement opened in 1851 (Amanda Way's Winchester convention; the Indiana Woman's Rights Association at Dublin).
Granger
- 1851–1920Suffrage — the State Course, with a Correction; the Township an Honest Negative
Indiana's course: Amanda Way called the state's first women's rights convention at Winchester in 1851 — the same year the white male electorate voted Article XIII in.
Lakeville
- 1851–1920Suffrage: the 69-year campaign, the 1917 municipal fight in this county, and the Penn Township test
Indiana's campaign began with a convention and ended with a courtroom reversal on this county's doorstep: Amanda Way called the 1851 Winchester women's-rights convention that opened Indiana's sixty-nine-year suffrage campaign.
Osceola
- 1851–1971The passenger era, and its end line by line
The service began with the road itself in 1851; by the 1890s the town rode in numbers the city's history preserves from the greatest excursion season of the century: for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, Mishawakans traveled "by the Lake Shore Railroad, Grand Trunk Railway, or steamer across the…
Mishawaka
- 1851–2013The works fires: the anchor plants burn, one by one
Wagner's brewery, 1851: John Wagner had operated a brewery and distillery in Mishawaka since 1839. In 1851 his business burned.
Mishawaka
- 1851–2026The disaster set at building granularity: a register
(a) The anchor-plant fire series, as a register: Wagner brewery , Center Street — brewery and distillery building burned, 1851 ; rebuilt on North Center Street, 1853.
Mishawaka
- 1851–2026The steam road under all its names: 1851 to Norfolk Southern
One railroad has run through New Carlisle since 1851, under six owners' names, and it has never moved.
New Carlisle
- 1851–2026The main line and its station
The railroad came before the town had a government, and it still cuts the town in two: the Northern Indiana & Chicago Railroad was chartered 30 November 1850 and opened through Osceola on 4 October 1851, reaching Chicago on 20 February 1852…
Osceola
- 1851–2026The owners roster — proprietors paired to their firms, era by era
Stephens — West York grocery and post office, 1851; the first Walkerton store, 1854. C. Behrn (Behrens) — general store, by 1869.
Walkerton
- 1851–todayThe sisters as a workforce: thirty-two years of nursing, a hospital, a nursing school, and the motherhouse on Dragoon Trail
The Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, founded at Dernbach, Germany, in 1851 by Maria Katharina Kasper, sent three sisters to Mishawaka, who arrived on 25 October 1878 and settled at St. Agnes Convent, at Fourth and Spring Streets.
Mishawaka
- 1851–todayThe Methodist Church, 1851 — North Liberty United Methodist Church Today
The first church in Liberty Township was Methodist, erected in the town in 1851 and replaced in 1878; its congregation meets today as North Liberty United Methodist Church.
North Liberty
- 1852The county fair comes to Mishawaka, 1852 — at pointer size
The pointer: The oldest gathering in this record is the St. Joseph County fair of 1852, the one year the county's fair stood on Mishawaka ground.
Mishawaka
- 1852The Masons: Mishawaka Lodge No. 130, from 1852
The institution: A Masonic lodge was organized in Mishawaka on 26 May 1852, and Howard prints its first officers whole: R. S. Alden, Worshipful Master; D. H. Smith, Senior Warden; J. Holdridge, Junior Warden; J. E. Hollister, treasurer; T. S. Cowles, secretary; A. C. Foot, Senior Deacon; W. M. Wood, Junior Deacon; A. L. Brimsmaid, Tyler.
Mishawaka
- 1852Mishawaka Lodge No. 130: the order of 26 May 1852
The institution: Mishawaka's Masonic lodge was organized on 26 May 1852 — the town's second lodge body, a decade behind the Odd Fellows' first — and Howard prints its first officers whole: R. S. Alden, Worshipful Master; D. H. Smith, Senior Warden; J. Holdridge, Junior Warden; J. E. Hollister, treasurer…
Mishawaka
- 1852The South Bend Breweries
The pointers: The Muessel brewery of South Bend — Christopher Muessel's house of 1852/53, incorporated 1893, the region's first brewery by its nomination's frame…
Mishawaka
- 1852The Fair Mishawaka Hosted: The County Fair of 1852
The St. Joseph County Agricultural Society that held the fair of 1852 was the society's second organization.
Mishawaka
- 1852The one fair on Penn ground: 1852
In the fall of 1852 the county fair was held at Mishawaka — then the township's river town, its west end — "the people of the town paying all the expenses," with an address by the Hon. John B. Niles of La Porte.
Osceola
- 1852Wagons and plows: the founding shops
Two small shops opened within three years of each other made the city: In February 1852, at the corner of Michigan and Jefferson in the little county-seat town, the brothers Henry and Clement Studebaker — blacksmiths, the younger a wagonmaker — opened the H. & C. Studebaker blacksmith and wagon shop.
South Bend
- 1852The wagon trade: a continent first
The first export market was the West: The Studebaker works began in 1852 as a blacksmith shop that built two wagons in its first year, and the trade it built was outward from the start — westward, along the emigrant roads.
South Bend
- 1852The five Studebaker brothers — the founding, divided
Henry Studebaker (1826–1895) and Clement Studebaker (1831–1901), sons of John and Rebecca Studebaker of Ashland County, Ohio, opened the blacksmith shop at Michigan and Jefferson streets on 16 February 1852 on $68 of capital, making metal parts for freight wagons and, within the year, complete wagons.
South Bend
- 1852The fairgrounds: the ground racing grew out of
The county agricultural society held a fair at Mishawaka in the fall of 1852; in 1853 it leased, and then purchased, two acres on Washington Street in South Bend, and held its fairs there until 1857.
South Bend
- 1852The Sixty-Eight Dollars and the Wagon That Ran Thirty-Three Years
The founding as the county history prints it: Howard's History (1907) states it in the sentence every telling since has quoted: “With sixty-eight dollars in cash and stock-in-trade, these two boys opened a blacksmith shop in South Bend” — Henry and Clement Studebaker, in February 1852, at Main and Jefferson.
South Bend
- 1852The first brewer: the question, and the Muessel ground
When he reached South Bend, the nomination says, sources vary between 1852 and 1853, and the variance is printed here as the record gives it.
South Bend
- 1852–1865The county register that does not survive
The test, run against the surviving-register record: the 1852 registration act made every Indiana county clerk the keeper of a register of the county's Black residents — the "Negro register" — and the question for this county is whether its volume survives.
Mishawaka
- 1852–1868H. & C. Studebaker: the $68 shop
The founding: Henry Studebaker (1826–1895) and Clement Studebaker (1831–1901), sons of John and Rebecca Studebaker of Ashland County, Ohio, and grandsons of a German wagon-making family that had arrived at Philadelphia from Rotterdam in 1736, opened a blacksmith shop at the corner of Michigan and Jefferson streets in…
South Bend
- 1852–1872Washington Street, Portage Avenue, and Camp Rose
In the fall of 1852 the fair was held at Mishawaka, the people of the town paying all the expenses.
South Bend
- 1852–1909The wagon works as a system
Carlisle sets the endpoints side by side: in 1852, two wagons built; in 1904, more than one hundred thousand vehicles of every description made and sold.
South Bend
- 1852–1912The first sellers: the wagon maker's repositories
Henry and Clement Studebaker opened their blacksmith shop in South Bend on 16 February 1852 with sixty-eight dollars and two forges, and as the wagon works grew, the company sold through repositories: company repositories in the great cities and selling agencies in the towns.
South Bend
- 1852–1936The flagship family brewery — none on this ground; the county's flagship
The Muessel Brewery, South Bend: Christopher Muessel (1812–1894) founded it in 1852; about 1865–1868 the family removed to the Portage Avenue / Elwood Avenue ground (1408 Elwood), on 136 acres north of the city with its water power, where the brewhouse complex rose.
Osceola
- 1852–1936The breweries, as businesses — a cross-reference
Christopher Muessel began brewing in South Bend in 1852 and built one of the city's substantial nineteenth-century industries; the Muessel Brewing Company was incorporated in 1893, and Prohibition closed the works about 1922.
South Bend
- 1852–1953The farmers' institutions, in a row, each dated
The St. Joseph County Agricultural Society was reorganized on 15 March 1858 under the act of 17 February 1852, and held its first fair on new grounds on 28–30 September 1858…
North Liberty
- 1852–1972The saloon era as a trade, tested: the keepers owned the brewery — in South Bend
Its senior house was the Muessel brewery of South Bend, begun in 1852 by Christopher Muessel (1812–1894, born at Arzberg in Germany), rebuilt in brick from 1865 west of Portage Avenue, incorporated as the Muessel Brewing Company in 1893, and run on the classic tied pattern: Standard and Bavarian sold in barrels to the…
Granger
- 1852–1972The saloon era as a trade: the county's system, and this ground's named gap
South Bend's senior house was Muessel's: begun in 1852 by Christopher Muessel (1812–1894), incorporated as the Muessel Brewing Company in 1893, selling Standard and Bavarian in barrels to the taverns and Arzburg Export bottled for the home trade; reorganised into Drewry's, Limited in 1936, it brewed until the fall of 1972.
Osceola
- 1852–1972The longest-lived local house, with its full run
The longest-lived house in the county record, which is the row's substance, is the Muessel ground itself, and its full run is printed in one unbroken line: family brewery founded 1852 ; removed to the Elwood Avenue ground about 1865–1868 ; incorporated as the Muessel Brewing Company 1893…
Osceola
- 1852–2011The distillers as a searched negative, with its date span printed
Date span searched: 1852–2011 — from the county's first brewery year to the modern era's first-documented distillery year in the floor pattern — printed on the negative, as the row requires; a negative without its span fails the leg, and this one carries its span.
Osceola
- 1852–2026The first lodge whole, and the two out-of-county seats township men actually joined
The first lodge whole is Mishawaka's: organized 26 May 1852, A. L. 5852, with the organization officers Chapman and Howard agree on word for word — R. S. Alden, W.M.; D. H. Smith, S.W.; J. Holdridge, J.W.; J. E. Hollister, treasurer; T. S. Cowles, secretary; A. C. Foot, S.D.; W. M. Wood, J.D.; A. L. Brimsmaid, Tyler.
Granger
- 1852–todayThe second rank, in brief — and the gaps this record names
Christopher Muessel began brewing in South Bend in 1852 and built one of the city's substantial nineteenth-century industries; the Muessel Brewing Company was incorporated in 1893, and the brewery record whole…
South Bend
- 1853The newspaper with three birthdays
The county histories say 1853: Chapman (1880) and Howard (1907) both begin the Free Press in that year, DeWitt Clinton Ireland founder, sold two years on to L. A. Elliott, who changed the name to the Enterprise.
Mishawaka
- 1853The longest-lived house, and the keepers' test
On the ground from 1853 (and in its founder's operation from 1839) to the close of 1951, it outlasted Muessel as a family brewery — South Bend's house passed to Drewry's of Winnipeg in 1936, its family brewing done by about 1922 — and it outlasted the keepers' association itself, which closed in 1950, a year before it.
Mishawaka
- 1853–1855Beyond the Congregations: Academies, Schools, and Shared Works
In 1853 Father Sorin bought the Indiana City Hotel and installed a girls' boarding school there, Holy Angels Academy, taught by the Sisters of the Holy Cross.
Mishawaka
- 1853–1858Wheelbarrow Johnny
The tale: John Mohler Studebaker went west in 1853, to Hangtown — Placerville, California — and the story the family and the company told of him ever after is the wheelbarrow.
South Bend
- 1853–1886The bucket town and the volunteer companies
The city's present fire department page states that "the area's first organized fire protection entity commenced operations on January 29, 1853, twelve years before the incorporation of the city," and the department counted itself 154 years old in 2007, which counts from 1853.
South Bend
- 1853–1903The Rotation That Never Came Back: The County Fair After 1852
The 1853 fair stood on the Washington Street acres described above.
Mishawaka
- 1853–1938The Times line and the News-Times: the Democratic paper, 1853–1938
The other line: The Tribune 's great rival began as the St. Joseph County Forum , started in 1853 by Ariel Euclid Drapier and his son William H. Drapier…
South Bend
- 1853–1951Kamm & Schellinger — the brewery
Wagner's brewery: Mishawaka's brewing course opens with John Wagner, who built the first brewery structures in 1853 — the date the Indiana Historical Bureau's marker gives and the year the National Register nomination carries for the original Brewery Building at 100 Center Street.
Mishawaka
- 1853–2026The auto-corridor big screen, and the cinema inside the brewery
The cinema inside another industry's building is the 100 Center Cinema : the Kamm & Schellinger Brewery at 100 Center Street, Mishawaka — brewery buildings from 1853 onward, brewing ended about 1951 — was converted in 1968 into the 100 Center entertainment and retail complex, with a cinema inside the brewery as one of its founding uses.
Granger
- 1853–2026Long studios in succession: the floor's chain, the nearer dynasty, and the townships' empty column
Baden or Württemberg, 1830; in Allen County by 26 December 1849) advertised daguerreotypes at one dollar to close out stock in October 1853; the 1860 census lists him as a book binder…
Granger
- 1853–2026The enforcement succession, named in this section
From 1853–54 the Terre Coupee Anti-Horse-Thief Association's riders were "authorized to act as constables for the purposes of the association by a State law" (Chapman) — the township's first enforcement form, a mutual company's riders wearing a constable's authority for one class of crime.
New Carlisle
- 1853–2026The north–south road: the Cincinnati, Peru & Chicago succession, and who runs it now
The town's founding railroad ran north and south: the Cincinnati, Peru & Chicago Railway was chartered on 2 June 1853 and built through this ground in 1855, on the La Porte-to-Plymouth course that made West Troy and then Walkerton possible (the Story of Walkerton section leg carries the plats).
Walkerton
- 1853–todayMedia as business — the newspapers and the broadcasters, as firms
The Mishawaka Enterprise, as a firm: the property begins as D. C. Ireland's Free Press — founded 1853 in the county histories, 1855 in the contemporary Register notices, 1854 in the paper's own later directory returns, the conflict printed whole in the newspapers file…
Mishawaka
- 1853–today100 Center Street — the brewery address the city keeps in the news
The ground: The Kamm and Schellinger Brewery at 100 Center Street, listed on the National Register on 11 October 1979, is the city's one industrial building of Register standing — the brewery John Wagner built in 1853, bought in 1870 by Adolph Kamm and Clemens Dick, and incorporated in 1883 with Adolph Kamm president.
Mishawaka
- 1853–todayThe Kamm and Schellinger Brewery: the 1853 stack and the 100 Center
The brewery building itself is mill construction in Chicago common brick painted red, on a rubble stone foundation, four stories tall, its front topped by an elaborate metal cornice and pediment framing the date 1853, a colonnaded cupola over a twelve-foot roof vent…
Mishawaka
- 1853–todayThe architects of Mishawaka buildings
John Wagner, builder-architect of the Kamm brewery buildings of 1853 — a brewer building his own works. Elom Eller, the farmer who built the Eller-Hosford House of 1875–77 — the Register's database credits him where his nomination's form reads "Unknown," and both stand.
Mishawaka
- 1853–todayThe fire chiefs
The department's own count: The fire department dated itself in 2007 at a hundred and fifty-four years — a founding in 1853 — while Edythe Brown's 1920 table of South Bend firsts gives "1855 — First Fire Department, Volunteer."
South Bend
- 1854Edwin Douglass Eaton — born in the township, 1854
Edwin Douglass Eaton , grandson of Isaac and son of Jacob, "was born in this township on the 28th of March, 1854," and is printed "a representative of one of its oldest and most prominent families."
Indian Village
- 1854The Bank of Mishawaka — the bank that never opened
Its notes were unknown to collectors until the American Bank Note Company's archive holdings were dispersed; what survives is proof impressions, among them a $2 proof dated 1 August 1854 (Wolka 1620-04 in the Indiana obsolete-currency census).
Mishawaka
- 1854The bankers — a paper bank, one charter, and Darwin Wiekamp
A Bank of Mishawaka was organized under Indiana's free-banking law in 1854 and its notes were engraved by the American Bank Note Company — and the bank never opened; it survives as proof notes, and no organizer's name stands in the numismatic record that carries it.
Mishawaka
- 1854The founding benefactions: deeds, not cheques
On 6 September 1854 Samuel Gard deeded land to trustees for a burial ground — Deed Record 72, page 625 — the founding gift of Porter-Rea Cemetery, unpriced in every carrier reached and printed as unpriced…
North Liberty
- 1854Denniston & Fellows, and Taylor's Field: the near south side
The city's near south side was platted in three campaigns over forty years: the middle of it first — the plat of Joseph Fellows and Hugh Denniston, laid out in 1854 between Fellows Street and Carroll Street, which a district of thirty-five frame dwellings filled by the time of the 1885 Sanborn map.
South Bend
- 1854–1855The Cholera Year and the Drained Lakes
The epidemic of 1854 was worse than the poverty. Cholera struck the community in the summer of 1854.
Notre Dame
- 1854–1877The founders' frame: two plats, two naming stories, two incorporation years
The first of them was West Troy, "laid out by Elias D. Jones in the southeast part of the northeast quarter of section twenty-three, township thirty-five north, range one west," and platted by him on 14 December 1854 (Howard).
Walkerton
- 1854–1889Ground succession: the mill ground that carries two names, and the residue
The traced case is Coquillard's mill ground: a mill built and run from the summer of 1854 to about 1864 by A. W. Shidler for Alexis Coquillard — the township's French name as proprietor, a hired builder as operator.
Lakeville
- 1854–1907The Founding Generation — One Faculty in Many Buildings
St. Joseph Grade School dates to 1854, with the Sisters of the Holy Cross teaching in the city from that year — the sisters’ arrival and the school’s founding are one event in the record.
South Bend
- 1854–1983Banking: One Charter, No Sized Fortune
The town's first bank never opened — the Bank of Mishawaka free bank of 1854 survives only as proof notes.
Mishawaka
- 1854–todayPine Creek Church of the Brethren, 1854 — The Township Mother House
Pine Creek, organized in 1854 in the township south of town, is the Brethren congregation from which the town church and two sister houses grew; it meets today on the Pine–Stanton corner.
North Liberty
- 1854–todayPorter-Rea: the community's burial ground, unsegregated from 1854
The Historical Bureau's Porter (Rea) Cemetery marker (71.2003.1, installed 2003) reads: the cemetery was officially created on 6 September 1854, when Samuel Gard deeded land to trustees for a burial ground — the deed is cited to Deed Record 72, page 625…
North Liberty
- 1854–todayExhibits in the open air: springhouse, barn, cemetery
Porter-Rea Cemetery, deeded in 1854, carries its 2003 Historical Bureau marker and a virtual tour produced under the state's cultural-resources program telling the Huggart Settlement's story at the graves themselves.
North Liberty
- 1855The successor line: the Bank of the State of Indiana, 1855–1864
Howard (1907), §16: "On March 3, 1855, a charter had been obtained for a bank to be known as the Bank of the State of Indiana, with a capital of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to begin business on the expiration of the charter of the old bank.
Granger
- 1855The Move and the Land, 1855
The cornerstone of the new house was blessed on 24 April 1855, and Sorin gave the institution its title: St. Mary's of the Immaculate Conception.
Notre Dame
- 1855James Oliver and Harvey Little — the foundry quarter-shares
He learned iron work in Indiana, and in May 1855 he and a fellow molder, Harvey Little, each bought a one-fourth interest in a small South Bend foundry that cast iron plows.
South Bend
- 1855The York Rite: Chapter No. 29, Commandery No. 13, Council No. 82
South Bend Chapter No. 29, Royal Arch Masons, was instituted in 1855 — before South Bend Lodge, before Germania Lodge, when St. Joseph Lodge stood nearly alone — and met the second Monday of the month; Chapman prints Elmer Crockett as its High Priest in 1880.
South Bend
- 1855–1884John Clarkson Birdsell and the huller fight that reached the Supreme Court
John Clarkson Birdsell, working at West Henrietta, New York, took Letters Patent No. 20,249 on 18 May 1858 for his improvement in machines for threshing and hulling clover seed — the local account of a first patent in December 1855 stands beside it in the Businesses entry, and the patent of record is the 1858 grant, reissued in 1862.
South Bend
- 1855–1929Founder-to-heir successions as fractions and descents: the Oliver quarter-shares, and Joseph D. Oliver the heir who ran it
On 5 May 1855 James Oliver (born Newcastleton, Scotland, 28 August 1823; to Mishawaka with his family, then to South Bend in 1855) and his fellow molder Harvey Little each purchased a one-fourth interest in the little South Bend foundry of Ira Fox and Emsley Lamb — a quarter-share apiece, the foundry's other half in the sellers' hands.
Osceola
- 1855–1959The federal line I: from Colfax to the war generation
Colfax, cross-referenced: Schuyler Colfax — congressman 1855–1869, Speaker of the House, Vice President of the United States — is the summit of the line and is profiled at full size in the People section, including the Crédit Mobilier end of his career.
South Bend
- 1855–1985Oliver Chilled Plow Works — the plow that broke the prairie
He learned iron work in Indiana, and in May 1855 he and a fellow molder, Harvey Little, each bought a one-fourth interest in a small South Bend foundry that cast iron plows.
South Bend
- 1855–2026The federal line, in two runs
Run one, the founding generation, is a boundary run and prints at boundary size: the seat that held this county ground in Congress was South Bend's, and its holder was Schuyler Colfax…
Granger
- 1855–2026Saint Mary's College, Whole
The school that moved to the Rush property in 1855 was Saint Mary's Academy, and the state met it the same year: chartered by Indiana in 1855, it stands in the college's chronology of important dates as the first Catholic women's college empowered to grant degrees.
Notre Dame
- 1856–1859The additions the town grew in: Thrall's, and Stokes's silence
William C. Thrall's addition, platted 24 April 1856 on the east half of the northwest quarter of section 16, surveyed by Milton W. Stokes, is the first of them, and it is alive in the parcel record: 14 of the town's parcels carry Thrall's Addition in their descriptions, with lot numbers 19 to 22 among the samples…
Osceola
- 1856–2025Later Orders: Moose, Eagles, Prince Hall and the Klan Era
The grand lodge itself was established 16 September 1856.
Granger
- 1856–2026The Big Old Sanctuary: The Church of Our Lady of Loretto
The sisters' building files date it 1856; the college's chronology of important dates calls the Holy House of Loretto the campus's first permanent chapel in 1859; the college's 2021 release calls it the first brick building on campus, and the archives call it the oldest building on Saint Mary's campus.
Notre Dame
- 1856–2026Roads, mail and highways maps: the county drawn for travellers, as its own class
Its early sheets are state maps drawn for the road user before the highway era: an 1856 New Map of Indiana with its Roads and Distances — the stage-and-wagon traveller's sheet, on which this ground's roads are the Vistula and Goshen lines of the Corridors leg — and an 1866 Diagram of the State of Indiana .
Osceola
- 1856–2026The frame: five churches in 1907, and a boundary that sorts them still
The Catholic parish was founded in 1856, twenty-one years before incorporation, when the settlement was a railroad camp and a mission station on the Chicago road; the Methodist Episcopal society raised the township's first church house inside the future town in 1859…
Walkerton
- 1856–2026St. Patrick Parish, founded 1856 as St. Henry: the mother parish of the town
It was founded in 1856 as St. Henry Parish — the diocesan newspaper's history is the fullest account reached — when the first Mass was celebrated in the log-cabin home of parishioners by a Holy Cross priest from Notre Dame, and its founding families were Irish Catholics who had come to work on the railroad extension…
Walkerton
- 1856–todayThe station that wasn't: the Talley house and the Underground Railroad claim
Alfred Talley, born 1809, a printer from Chicago, bought 232.24 acres in Clay Township in 1856 from the widow of the farmer Samuel Brooks; the Brooks family's burying ground — the Tutt-Stuckey Cemetery, still on the brow of the hill between Juniper and Ironwood…
Granger
- 1856–todayThe tower's voice — twenty-three bells from Le Mans and the great bourdon
The 1856 bells: The Basilica's bells are older than the Basilica.
Notre Dame
- 1857The diocese over the parish: Fort Wayne–South Bend
St. Pius X stands inside a diocese older than the township's churches: the Diocese of Fort Wayne was erected on January 8, 1857, by Pope Pius IX, carved from the Diocese of Vincennes, which had held all Indiana until then, with John Luers as its first bishop.
Granger
- 1857The Bank of South Bend — the free bank
Suspension and closure: The Federal Reserve–derived record of nineteenth-century bank suspensions carries the bank twice: it suspended on 10 January 1855 and reopened, and it suspended again on 9 July 1857 — the summer the panic of 1857 was building — and that suspension ended in closure.
South Bend
- 1857The plowmaker to the world
A plow that crossed every ocean: James Oliver's chilled plow, patented from this ground in 1857, became the city's second great export good.
South Bend
- 1857The Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend
Erection: On 8 January 1857, Pope Pius IX erected the Diocese of Fort Wayne from territory of the Diocese of Vincennes, which had covered the whole of Indiana since 1834.
South Bend
- 1857–1859The plat: Lots A–F, and no dedicator named
The original plat, "consisting of Lots A. B. C. D. E. & F., on the west side of the Michigan road, is first shown on record as lying north of and adjoining Coquillard's addition to the town…
Lakeville
- 1857–1859The Paper First — Original Plat and Additions
Coquillard's Addition was platted 18 August 1857 by Alexis T., Alexis, and Frances C. Coquillard — an addition on the record two years before the original plat; its ground character then or now is not separately documented (a named gap at character strength; the 1875 Atlas's Lakeville plat at p. 40 is a settler).
Lakeville
- 1857–1873James Oliver and the chilled plow: the patent of 30 June 1857
The patent: The document on which South Bend's inventive record stands is Letters Patent No. 17,694, "Improvement in Chilling Plowshares," granted 30 June 1857 — and its face names two inventors, not one: James Oliver and Harvey Little, the fellow molder who had bought into the South Bend foundry beside him in May 1855.
South Bend
- 1857–1896The Congregation's Own Course: Separation, Autonomy, Approbation
In 1857 the sisters separated from the priests and brothers.
Notre Dame
- 1857–1916Benjamin Franklin Shively: the town's one national figure
The tie, stated exactly: the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (member S000371): "born near Osceola, St. Joseph County, Ind., March 20, 1857" — the House's own history entry repeats the wording.
Osceola
- 1857–1917The Professional Roster — Four Physicians in Polk, Three in Chapman, and the Attorneys Who Aren't There
Dr. Robert Moore came to Lakeville after his marriage of 19 March 1857 and, in Howard's words, "for forty-two years he has actively engaged in the practice of medicine" (d.
Lakeville
- 1858The County's First Murder Indictment: Eager and Kelley, 1858
Charles Eager was indicted on October 7, 1858, for the murder of Charles Kelley, at Mishawaka — the place stated in the indictment's own summary as Chapman prints it.
Mishawaka
- 1858Mishawaka at the State Fair: The Judging Committees of 1858
The premium list for the Seventh Annual Indiana State Fair, published in the Daily State Sentinel of Indianapolis on 1 April 1858, names the committees appointed to examine each department and award its premiums — and two of those committees carry a Mishawaka name.
Mishawaka
- 1858Notre Dame's military institutions · the cadets, the Midshipmen's School, and the tri-service ROTC
Father Edward Sorin's Continental Cadets drilled from 1858; Father William Corby — the chaplain who gave absolution at Gettysburg — revived the cadet corps in 1880 as the Hoynes Light Guards, under Colonel William Hoynes.
Notre Dame
- 1858The peoples of the factory city
The factories ran on immigrants, and the immigrants built a second city of parishes: The first waves were Irish and German — St. Patrick's parish, founded in 1858 by Irish and German immigrants, calls itself to this day the Mother Parish of South Bend.
South Bend
- 1858Draining the wet prairies and the Kankakee edge
The valley's drainage history, as the Kankakee Valley Historical Society and Fay Folsom Nichols's river history give it, runs: the first real drainage ditch in 1858…
South Bend
- 1858The Irish and the mother parish on Taylor Street
South Bend's Irish built the city's first parish: St. Patrick's, at 309 South Taylor Street on the near west side, was founded in 1858 by Irish and German immigrants together…
South Bend
- 1858–1861The first pictures: a daguerreian on Michigan Street, 1858–1861
The first name: The earliest photographer the record reached working in South Bend is C. A. Stover, listed in Craig's Daguerreian Registry as a daguerreian and ambrotypist here from 1858 to 1861.
South Bend
- 1858–1864The Bank of the State of Indiana — the successor branch
The South Bend branch's charter was obtained on 3 March 1855, three years before it was needed, with capital of $150,000, and when the old branch closed in 1858 the new one took its place in the same banking room at Michigan and Colfax.
South Bend
- 1858–1866The First Murder Trials
Navarre built at the bend in 1820; the county's first murder indictment in the histories came in 1858. What follows is Chapman's chapter, read first-hand, with each case's disposition as the court record gave it to him.
South Bend
- 1858–1907The township era: a schoolhouse of 1858, moved into town in 1876
Schooling on this ground begins, as it does across Indiana, as a township act: Howard's history of 1907 records that Lincoln Township's first school house was erected in 1858, about a mile from the present town of Walkerton — two years after the Walkerton plat itself…
Walkerton
- 1858–1918The early case record: a tested blank
Swept for this build, that record seats the county's first murder indictment in 1858 — the Eager and Kelley case — on Mishawaka ground, and its other preserved killings in Greene Township, in South Bend, and at New Carlisle.
Osceola
- 1858–1918The early case record: a tested blank
Read whole for this build, the chapter seats its cases everywhere but here: Charles Eager, indicted October 7, 1858, for the murder of Charles Kelley at Mishawaka — the county's first murder indictment, ending in acquittal on self-defense; Alexander Wilson's 1860 killing of Samuel Pierson in Greene Township…
Walkerton
- 1858–1925Women of the trade, and the newcomers' studios
Almira Benham's Ladies Picture Gallery of 1858 (art-63-1) is the floor's founding entry: a woman's gallery run as a business in its own name, in rooms a male daguerreian had just vacated.
Granger
- 1858–2005High-Profile Murders as Their Own Treatment — Era by Era
1858–1906, the long quiet opening: The era holds one case, and it stands whole in crime-03: the county's first murder indictment, Eager's, for the 1858 stabbing of Charles Kelley at Mishawaka, ending in acquittal on self-defense.
Mishawaka
- 1858–2019The Enterprise, on Film at MPHPL
Its standing, from this build's experience: the film's existence and span (1858–2019) are holdings facts, printed from the library's own list.
Granger
- 1858–2022Orchards, Mechanisation, and the Farmers' Institutions
The St. Joseph County Agricultural Society was reorganised on 15 March 1858 under the act of 17 February 1852; its first fair on the new grounds ran 28–30 September 1858 (the fair article below carries the grounds).
Lakeville
- 1858–2026Gazetteers: each directory's form of the town
The earliest form reached in this build is Hawes' gazetteer of 1858–59, whose New Carlisle carries a Presbyterian church that no other record of the town preserves: the gazetteer's form of the town includes a congregation the ground has otherwise lost entire, and the Religion section carries it as a named gap with the…
New Carlisle
- 1858–2026The papers that carried Osceola
The Mishawaka Enterprise — the paper of the city four miles west, kept on the public library's film across a run of 1858–2019 — is the file in which Osceola's nineteenth and twentieth centuries were written down week by week, and the South Bend Tribune is the daily that has carried the town's major record into print…
Osceola
- 1858–todayThe collections: the city's archive of first resort
The Enterprise : the issue of April 7, 1858 to October 28, 1865; a single issue of May 28, 1870; and then from September 7, 1872 — the week of the Great Fire, two days after it — in a weekly sequence that runs, through duplicate and overlapping reels the list itself discloses, to December 26, 2019, the last reel.
Mishawaka
- 1859The wreck of June 27, 1859: the Night Express at Springbrook
The event, soberly, from the record: On the night of 27 June 1859 the eastbound Night Express from Chicago to Toledo, carrying about 150 people on the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana, was due in Mishawaka at 11:27 p.m.
Mishawaka
- 1859The Springbrook wreck · the night the railroad killed its passengers
The young city's first catastrophe came on its proudest work: Eight years after the first train reached South Bend, the Michigan Southern's Night Express , running from Chicago to Toledo with some 150 passengers, plunged into the Springbrook ravine between Mishawaka and South Bend just before midnight on 27 June 1859.
South Bend
- 1859–1932The historians, as authors
The town's own first historian wrote in a newspaper: George Merrifield, a pioneer who taught school in Mishawaka off and on for twenty years, published nine articles in 1859 under the title "Mishawaka: Its Early History and Present Condition" — the record's first sustained act of local history-writing, quoted still by every successor.
Mishawaka
- 1859–1938The wrecks the record keeps
Three wrecks stand in the documentary record of South Bend's railroads, and they are printed here at the record's size — the offenses, if any, belong to Crime History, and the first of them stands also in Major Events: The great early disaster came on 27 June 1859, eight years after the first train.
South Bend
- 1859–1978The philanthropy turn, measured: where the pools became institutions
1859: J. H. Service gives $500 to start the Methodist college — private money founding the building the town would buy for its school (the schools addendum carries the purchase).
New Carlisle
- 1859–1983The Old-Settlers' Stock: Merrifield's Articles, Brunner's 137 Essays, and the Certificates
George Merrifield, publisher of the town's first paper, published in 1859 — in the Enterprise , under Archibald Beal — a nine-article series, "Mishawaka: Its Early History and Present Condition": the town's first history, written within living memory of the founding by a man who had been part of it, and the seed…
Mishawaka
- 1859–2023The newspaper-to-book course, at anchor
It begins before the books did: Merrifield's nine newspaper articles of 1859 were history written for a newspaper's columns, the course De Kever's essays would repeat a century and a half later out of a classroom rather than a newsroom.
Mishawaka
- 1859–2024The Methodist Collegiate Institute: the town's grandest nineteenth-century building, gone in 2024
For a hundred sixty-five years the largest building of the town's first age stood on the Compton Street ground: the Methodist Collegiate Institute's brick pile of 1859, forty-four by seventy-five feet, two stories of brick raised for a college that the Schools section follows through its brief, earnest course.
New Carlisle
- 1859–2026The ladder, level by level: what was closed, converted and rebuilt
Chapman, read at the page for this section, tells it whole: the Methodist Episcopal Church erected the two-story brick building, 44 by 75 feet, in 1859 as a Methodist college — the Collegiate Institute…
New Carlisle
- 1859–2026The Methodist course, 1859–2026: the West York Mission Church becomes Walkerton Community Church
The first church erected in Lincoln Township was the Methodist Episcopal church at Walkerton, built in 1859 — before the town existed, in the settlement's third year of houses.
Walkerton