02-10-14 Council Agenda & Packet

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United Stales Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NIPS Form 10 -900 OMB No. 1024 -0018 South Bend City Cemetery St. Joseph, Indiana Name of Property County and State surrounded by a dense residential fabric. As a result of these additions, Linden Ave. which ran east -west along the north edge of the original plat now terminates along the eastern boundary. Selected significant dates are as follows: 1832 as the year City Cemetery was dedicated, 1835 as the year the Kankakee Mill Race project began, 1868 as Plat Addition 1, 1885 as the year of Schuyler Colfax's death and burial, 1898 as Plat Addition 2, 1899 as the reconfiguration of the entrance to Elm Street, the construction of the sexton's cottage and the new main gate erected at Elm Street. Narrative Statement of Significance (Provide at least one paragraph for each area of significance.) Social History (A) Alexis Coquillard of Detroit, Michigan moved to the area in sales with the American Fur Company. He purchased land near the "River Saint Joseph" in 1820. A sixth generation of family in the country, Coquillard and wife Frances Comparet made the first "civilized home" in the wilderness where South Bend now stands. It was he who was responsible for name change of the town from Southhold to South Bend in 1830 and with Lathrop Taylor, founding South Bend one year later. He later paid St. Joseph County $3,000 to relocate the county seat to South Bend. Around 1835, shortly after the founding of South Bend, Alexis Coquillard and other partners began one of the earliest hydraulic canal projects in the area when they purchased land east of the St. Joseph River as well as the water power rights. The Kankakee Mill Race or Kankakee Race was a project to excavate from the St. Joseph River to a tributary and wet prairie of the Kankakee River intended to connect the headwaters. The Race was dug at the point Marion Street terminates at the St. Joseph River, continuing west and slightly south through City Cemetery, where the heaviest of the work was employed, at a depth of 10 % feet, to Stanfield's or Beck's Lake where the project was abandoned in 1844. The lake turned out to be a water shed, causing the water to leak away in the loose soil. So little water reached South Bend that the venture was deemed a failure, causing Mr. Coquillard's mortgages for land in the original plat of South Bend to foreclose and 2,000 acres of land to be sold by the bank, as appearing on deeds as Bank Outlots. An 1853 map of the lots for sale by the State Bank of Indiana shows the Kankakee Mill Race running through the area. This speculative effort was nearly Coquillard's financial undoing and dealt a significant blow to his professional reputation. He is buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery at the University of Notre Dame. In an article written by David R. Leeper February 2, 1897, he writes, "when this landmark, once prized as so important to the town and county, will be preserved, if at all, only on paper, to be scanned by none, it may be, save the antiquarian or sociologist, who would glean practical lessons from the wisdom and the folly of the past." The Kankakee Mill Race became widely known as Coquillard's Folly. City Cemetery boasts the only remaining evidence of the Kankakee Mill Race. A bridge that once crossed over the water of the Race remains located in the center of the Race within the cemetery boundary. The date of construction of the bridge is unknown but in a June 13, 1887 note to the Mayor and Common Council, it was suggested that the proposed bridge across the Section 8 page 14