Allen County in order
On Christmas morning 1789 a young trader played his flute at mass in the Miami town. Sixty-nine years later a sheriff stood at the courthouse door and offered a college's ground for sale. Between those two mornings sit 24 dated events, in the order they happened.
Every one of them comes out of a piece published here, and links back to it. That is the whole rule: no event this archive has not written about, and no date its sources do not carry. The line under each year is built from that piece's own sentences, so a reader who doubts one can open it and check.
It follows that this page is a record of what has been written rather than of what happened. It begins in 1789 and ends in 1858 because those are the ends of the archive, not the ends of the county, and it grows when a piece does.
1789
On Christmas morning Henry Hay took his flute to mass at the Miami town, and through that winter wrote down the captives brought in across the river.
Fort Wayne in 1790: the journal of Henry Hay
1790
Josiah Harmar marched an army north to the Miami towns. A first sergeant who was there said a Miami chief was in the water at the ford; the county's first historian later put him on the bank, a boy of ten or twelve.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 4 March 1843
1794
On the morning of 22 October, after a night cold enough to freeze the ground hard, Hamtramck marched six companies into a new log fort, fired fifteen rounds and gave it the name.
Journal of Wayne's Campaign; The American Pioneer
1805
On 10 September John Johnston made a fair copy of what the United States factory was owed, down to a labourer owing two dollars and seventy and a half cents. The Indian debtors are one line with no name on it.
Fort Wayne, Gateway of the West, 1802-1813
1811
On 26 March a fatigue party from the garrison was at work in the public cornfield. A private pleaded guilty to rioting, and what the witnesses said was not about the riot.
Fort Wayne, Gateway of the West, 1802-1813
1837
In September the commissioners organised Cedar Creek Township. Somebody built its first schoolhouse near the centre of it, by a swamp, with no roads leading to it, and it was never used as a school.
History of Allen County, Indiana, 1880
1838
Marshall S. Wines bought a sawmill on the south bank of the Maumee, about ten rods east of where the Hanover Street bridge would later cross the canal.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 30 July 1842
1839
Land Samuel Hanna had sold to Eben Burgess was cut into town lots and named New Haven.
History of Allen County, Indiana, 1880
1841
In April the clerk counted the fines and forfeitures the courts had owed the Seminary Fund since 1824 against what had actually been collected.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 8 May 1841
1841
On 22 April William D. Mahon headed his canal advertisement with one word, OPPOSITION, and promised to step between the public's purse and the old line's extortion.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 22 May 1841
1842
On 4 January a justice of the peace issued a writ of domestic attachment against Mahon's goods, chattels, credits and effects.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 8 January 1842
1842
On 24 September the Sentinel announced the death of Col. Wines, who had gone bail for another man's debt and lost the mills for it.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 24 September 1842
1843
On 17 June Hamilton & Williams offered the highest price for any quantity of black salts, and farmers bought kettles to boil their ashes down.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 26 August 1843
1843
At the end of August two merchants set out the paper a farmer might be handed across their counter. A dollar in old scrip bought eighty-five or ninety cents of goods. A dollar in Blue Dog bought forty.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 2 September 1843
1843
On 4 November a stranger advertised a camera in a brick building in town. Four weeks later the editor said the town had a daguerreotypist of its own.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 4 November 1843
1844
In March Samuel Edsall asked the town for a bridge over the St. Mary's and took the contract himself.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 23 March 1844
1845
Word came to John Chapman that cattle had broken into one of his nurseries. He went at once, lay down that night and did not get up again, and by 5 April a notice called him late of Allen county, deceased.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 19 April 1845
1847
On a Wednesday in June a procession formed at the Methodist church and walked to the ground at the end of West Wayne Street to lay the corner stone of the Fort Wayne Female College.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 26 June 1847
1851
In April Louis Lopshire platted Middletown beside the new plank road and placed it on the county records.
History of Allen County, Indiana, 1880
1853
On 11 June the editor of the Sentinel gave a paragraph to the school meeting at the courthouse. The city had twelve hundred school children and no public schoolhouse, and the voters turned the tax down.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 11 June 1853
1855
On a Wednesday in December Daniel W. Burroughs caught his hand in his own steam press.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 22 December 1855
1856
On 2 February the Sentinel printed a second notice: the Standard had stopped, its editor being incapacitated by the injury.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 2 February 1856
1857
The first public school opened on Monday 9 February, four years after the town voted against paying for one.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 9 February 1857
1858
On 29 May the sheriff offered the college ground for sale, taken as the property of the trustees.
Fort Wayne Sentinel, 29 May 1858