Much has been written about the origins of Edwardsburg and still many questions remain unanswered.

There is limited published information about the early days of the town. Most of what has been written is in a variety of forms. Dissertations, descriptions, presentations to the public by a number of people, poetry and interviews with early residents are scattered everywhere.

Am I suggesting that I take on the task of putting it all together? No! But when I do find some new information I am happy to share it.

I think I need to add the comedians line, “If you heard this before, stop me” but I will continue anyway.

I found a newspaper article from the News-Times Hoosier State Chronicles which was one of northern Indiana’s greatest papers. The News-Times was formed on June 2, 1913, from a merger between the South Bend Times and the short-lived South Bend News.

The Times had been in operation under several names since it was founded in 1881 by editor Henry Peed. After coming to South Bend to found the pro-Democrat Times, Peed quickly sold out to John B. Stoll and moved to Saline County, Missouri. John Stoll (1843-1926) was a true “rags to riches” American success story.

By 1853, Stoll’s mother decided to go to America with her 10-year-old son. The two emigrated to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where they lived in poverty. She died two years later.

Stoll barely spoke any English at all. Orphaned in a foreign country at age 12, he struggled to survive by working as a pin boy in a bowling alley and peddling peppermints, pins and needles on the streets of Harrisburg.

Fortunately, the teenage peddler quickly found a wealthy benefactor, who encouraged him to go into the printer’s trade. Stoll’s benefactor was Margaret Brua Cameron, wife of General Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, after serving as senator, he became Lincoln’s first secretary of war.

Helped by the Camerons, John Stoll managed to buy his first newspaper — the Johnstown Independent Observer — at age 17. That paper failed due to rising prices during the Civil War. Stoll went on to found the Times Printing Company of South Bend in 1882, which took over daily printing of the South Bend Daily Times in 1883. Stoll eventually sold the Times to the News-Times Printing Company in August 1911.

This new company was headed by Gabriel R. Summers, who had also published the News from 1908 until merging it with the Times on June 2, 1913.

Gabriel Summers was born in 1857 in New Carlisle, Indiana, and graduated from the University of Notre Dame at 16. The son of an Irish farmer, he went into farming and sold agricultural implements in South Bend and Walkerton. He was a prominent South Bend businessman.

His son-in law, 23-year-old Joseph M. Stephenson, took over as Editors of the News-Times upon his death. A 1921 advertisement in Printer’s Ink states that the News-Times publishes “morning, evening, and Sunday editions” and “blankets the territory with 17,000 daily and 18,000 Sunday circulation.” South Bend in 1921 had a population of about 70,000 people.

The News-Times began as a twice-daily publication but became a daily in 1927. Although it reached the peak of its circulation in 1937 during the closing years of the Great Depression, the paper was haunted by financial difficulties and went out of business on Dec. 27, 1938.

The paper and its immediate predecessors also helped launch the career of the great American sports columnist and short-story writer Ring Lardner and author and cartoonist J.P. McEvoy best known as the creator of the Dixie Dugan comic strip popular in the 1930s and 1940s.

Raised in nearby Niles, Lardner had one of his first newspaper jobs reporting for the Times. The News-Times enjoyed a “high-spirited competition” with its rival, the South Bend Tribune, as the two papers tried to outdo each other in local news coverage.

In the State Chronicles: Indiana’s Digital Newspaper Program these articles appeared in the June 11, 1930 edition. Henry Harwood was a member of the 30th Michigan Infantry the last regiment from the state mustered into service in the Civil War, served under Capitan Henry Kimball on Lake Erie where the Home Guard was sent to end rebel seizure of passenger vessels. They were captured and were tried by a court martial of the pirates.

Harwood was later detailed to the honor guard for the body of Abraham Lincoln on the train that carried him from Washington D.C. to Springfield Illinois.

In 1923 the Edwardsburg Presbyterian Church was one of the first congregations organized in Edwardsburg. The modern church and manse were financed by Charles Chapin of Niles in memory of her father H. H. Coolidge. H. H. Coolidge was a teacher in the school from 1839 to 1841 and then formed his own private school, which was inside in the Meade Building.

Seventeen Edwardsburg boys are active members of the Potato Club sponsored by Marvin Blanchard principal of the Edwardsburg schools as part of the Smith-Hughes agricultural class work. Six seniors were graduated from the school, which had an enrollment of 325.

Edwardsburg has numerous lodges among them are St. Peters F. and A.M., the Chapter of Eastern Star, the Ontwa Lodge of IOOF, Modern Woodmen and Royal Neighbors of America.

In commemoration of the part the highway played in the lives of the early settlers the Monday Evening Club in 1923 erected at the roadside opposite the school building a permanent stone marker bearing the date of the arrival of Beardsley.

Some of these facts you may have heard before but I found them interesting as they appeared in the South Bend newspaper.

The history of the South Bend Tribune I also thought was very interesting and the mention of Chapin and Ring Lardner in the article.

JoAnn Boepple works at the Edwardsburg Area History Museum.