FORT WAYNE, Ind., city and county seat of Allen County, situated in the north eastern part of the State, 102 miles northeast of Indianapolis, upon the Saint Joseph, Saint Mary's and Maumee Rivers, confluence of the first two within the city's limits forming the last named. It is notable as a railway centre, the following lines passing through or termi nating there: Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago, of the Pennsylvania Railway system; Wabash; New York, Chicago and Saint Louis; Grand Rapids and Indiana; Cincinnati, Rich mond and Fort Wayne; Lake Shore and gan Southern; Fort Wayne, Cincinnati and Louisville; Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton. The city is central in a rich and highly de veloped agricultural region that produces abun dant crops of the cereals of temperate climates. Considerable tracts of hardwood timber yet re main in what was once one of the most richly wooded sections of the Northwest. These cover a wide range and embrace numerous establishments of large magnitude including shops of the Pennsylvania and Wabash rail roads. In the various industries 13,416 persons were engaged in 1914. The capital invested in 1914 in 228 establishments was $31,167,000; the cost of the materials used in the same year was $14,148,000. The salaries and wages amounted to $8,935,000 in the same period. The manufactures include car-wheels, Corliss and other steam engines, boilers, gas engines, gas machinery, iron and steel bars, freight and passenger cars, locomotives, electrical machin ery and electrical fittings and fixtures, hosiery, gloves, caps, oil tanks, organs and pianos, wom en's garments, road construction machinery, carriages, wagons, washing machines, furniture, paper boxes, lumber, sash, doors, malt liquors, cigars, harness and leather findings and a con siderable variety otherwise of products in iron and steel, wood and textile fabrics. The value of the manufactured products was $30,205,000 in 1914, an increase of 30.8 per cent over 1909. The municipality owns and operates the public waterworks system, an abundant supply of pure water being poured from wells bored deeply into the rock, and distributed by means of three thoroughly equipped pumping stations. There is a handsome and substantial city hall and police headquarters and eight modern and thor oughly equipped houses advantageously situated shelter the city fire department.
The public buildings in the city are a court house (county), completed in 1902 at a cost of $1,000,000; United States post office and court house; a public library erected at a cost of $100,000 through a donation of Mr. Andrew Carnegie; county jail; high school and manual training school building, completed in 1904 at a cost of $300,000, and 15 grammar and ward school buildings, most of which are of very modern construction and beautiful architecture. The free-school system maintained by the city embraces a high school and manual training school, a training school for teachers and 15 ward and grammar schools, together with kindergarten departments. The free-school system is governed by a board of three trustees, elected triennially by the city council, the im mediate executive head of the schools being a superintendent elected by the board. There are six Roman Catholic parish schools in addi tion to a high school for boys and an academy for girls; and six German Lutheran parochial schools. Concordia College, founded in 185CI, is seated in Fort Wayne and is maintained under auspices of the German Lutheran Church. Near the city is an academy main tained under auspices of Catholic sisters, an academy for the higher education of young women. Among other institutions of learning are a college of medicine and surgery, a con servatory of music, a school of art, two busi ness colleges and a school of oratory, expres sion and physical culture. There are 47 re ligious congregations and 40 church edifices, many of them beautiful and costly examples of ecclesiastical architecture. The congrega tions are distributed denominationally as fol lows: Baptist, two; Christian, three; Congrega tional, two; Episcopal, two; Evangelical Asso ciation, one; Evangelical Lutheran (English), three; Evangelical Lutheran (German), four; German Lutheran, three; Methodist Episcopal, five; Free Methodist, one; African Methodist Episcopal, one; Presbyterian, four; United Presbyterian, one; Reformed (German), two; Roman Catholic, seven; United Brethren, one; Baptist Brethren, one; Christian Science, two.
The city is the see of the Catholic diocese of Fort Wayne. The city has a central charities organization and many of the religious con gregations maintain comprehensive societies for charitable and benevolent work. There are four large hospitals of modern equipment, one non-sectarian, two under Roman Catholic and one under German Lutheran administration. There are three orphan asylums, two sectarian and one maintained by the county; home for emergencies and a refuge for women. Just beyond the city limits is the State School and Home for Feeble-Minded Youth of both sexes and Home for Epileptic Women. The city has many national and private banks, trust companies and building and loan associations. Its banks represent a capitalization of about $5,000,000. The total public park acreage of the city is 95.49, distributed as follows: Swinney, 45.24; Lawton, 31.20; Reservoir, 13; McCulloch, 4; Hayden, 1.12; Piqua, .75; Old Fort (site of stockade built by General Anthony Wayne in 1794), .18. There are five cemeteries: Achduth Weshalom (Hebrew), Concordia (German Lutheran), Saint John's (German Lutheran), New Catholic (Roman Catholic), and Lindenwood (non-denomina tional). The city is governed under a special charter, conferred by. the State legislature, which provides for a municipal legislative body of one councilman from each of the 10 wards and five at large, chosen biennially, a mayor and city clerk, chosen quadriennially, and a board of waterworks trustees, chosen biennially. The board of public works, board of public safety, health commissioner and park and street superintendents and city attorney and city comptroller are appointed by the mayor. Council fixes all municipal tax levies and ap propriations and has final approval of all con tracts and franchises. Fort Wayne is an im portant and flourishing trade centre and has a commerce that embraces extensive wholesale and jobbing operations in dry goods, groceries, light and heavy hardware, drugs, millinery, paper, etc. The total volume of wholesale trade has a value of about $10,000,000. The total post office receipts are about $200,000 annually. The city takes its name from a fort built on a part of the present site of the city by Gen. Anthony Wayne in 1794. The place, however, had a history that long antedated this. There is evidence that LaSalle had visi ted the locality as early as 1670. It was the site of Ke-ki-on-ga, the °central cit.' of the once powerful and warlike Miami Indians. At different times during the 17th and 18th cen turies French and English had military posts at Ke-ki-on-ga. In 1790 General Harmar led an expedition against the Miami city, but was signally defeated itt a fierce engagement on the Maumee River within what is now the limits of the city of Fort Wayne. In 1791 General St. Clair in a similar expedition was over whelmed a short distance southeast of Fort Wayne by the Indians under the famous Miami chief, Little Turtle. General Wayne in 1794 headed a third expedition against the Indians in the Northwest and after utterly defeating them at the battle of Fallen Timbers on the Lower Maumee in northwestern Ohio marched to Ke-ki-on-ga and in September of that year built his stockade on an eminence overlooking the confluence of the Saint Joseph. and Saint Mary's rivers. There was no further serious trouble with the Indians until August 1812, when the conspiracy of Tecumseh and his brother The Prophet ensued in a close invest ment of Fort Wayne and its meagre garrison. The siege was vigorously pressed for about two weeks, when it was raised by a force that had been dispatched to relief of the beleaguered garrison. Fort Wayne at once assumed im portance as a trading post and in 1825 the town itself was laid out. In 1840 Fort Wayne took rank as a city. Between 1850 and 1860 began the era of railroads, when growth received fresh and powerful impetus and Fort Wayne came to be one of the foremost industrial and commercial cities of the State. Pop. (1910) 63,933 ; (1914) 72,332. Consult Dillon, J. B.,
of Indiana' (Indianapolis 1859) ; Smith,