A Bend in Time

Latest Episodes:

Series 08-01: The Game They Didn't Know How To Play Oct 14, 2026

Show notes

Episode 1: The Game They Didn't Know How to Play

In November 1887, the University of Michigan came to South Bend to play Notre Dame's first-ever football game — except Notre Dame didn't know how to play. The students had tried learning the sport from a rulebook, and it had not gone well, so the visitors spent the morning teaching it before anyone bothered to keep score. What they finally played lasted less than half a game and ended 8-0, but the record books still count it as the first meeting in one of college football's great rivalries.

Part of Series 8: The Early Years of Notre Dame Football

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is generously sponsored by the Janice & Larry Harding Family Fund.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Series 07-08: Famous Firsts Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

Episode 8: Coquillard's Folly

This final episode rounds up the milestones that turned a handful of cabins into a real town: Horatio Chapin's dry goods store, Sunday school, and stint as the town's first board president; the county's first sheriff, treasurer, and jail; the courthouse Peter Johnson built for $6,000; and the marriages, births, and everyday lives that filled in the town Coquillard and Taylor had platted.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is presented in conjunction with The History Museum's America250 programming and the exhibit First Peoples, First Settlers: Indiana's Interwoven Roots, which explores the beginnings of settlement in the area and the interactions between European settlers and America's Native peoples. First Peoples, First Settlers is on display until January 31, 2027.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Series 07-07: The Trail of Death Aug 20, 2026

Show notes

Episode 7: The Trail of Death

As the region's new settlements grew, the desire for land grew with it. The land, however, was already occupied. Most of the area's native peoples were coerced, threatened, and then mandated at gunpoint to give up their homelands and move west. This episode traces the forced removal of Chief Menominee's band from Twin Lakes in 1838, the 660-mile march that killed at least 42 people, and the far murkier story of Alexis Coquillard's own role in completing the removals.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Series 07-06: Coquillard's Folly Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

Episode 6: Coquillard's Folly

Canal Fever swept the nation after the Erie Canal turned Buffalo mud into New York gold, and Alexis Coquillard caught it bad. With the fur trade dead and mill-powered boomtowns like Lowell and Rochester as his model, South Bend's founder staked his fortune on a four-mile mill race meant to divert the Kankakee into the St. Joseph and turn South Bend into an industrial powerhouse. Spoiler alert: It didn’t work.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Series 07-05: The First Census Aug 05, 2026

Show notes

Episode 5: The First Census

By 1831, South Bend is a real town of about 163 people, and this episode goes door to door to meet them: the innkeeper who built the courthouse, the man whose brick house made him "Frederick the Great," a keelboat captain who kept the town supplied before the railroads came, a young newspaperman who'd go on to run the U.S. Government Printing Office, a self-taught doctor who arrived knowing every soul in town, and eight Methodists who founded a church in the back of a Catholic tavern.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Series 07-04: Southold Jul 28, 2026

Show notes

Episode 4: Southold

Follow Coquillard and Taylor from fur traders to town-builders: the swamp that rerouted Michigan Road straight through South Bend, the baffling choice of "Southold" for the new post office, the platted streets that still exist today, and the three-thousand-dollar bond that stole the county seat away from a town that existed only on paper. By the end of it, the South Bend finally has the name it’s going to keep.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Series 07-03: Fur Traders Jul 22, 2026

Show notes

Episode 3: Fur Traders

Alexis Coquillard takes over Pierre Navarre's post in 1823, and a young rival, Lathrop Miner Taylor, arrives four years later. Learn how John Jacob Astor built America's first great monopoly by crushing foreign competitors and government trading posts alike, and how his agents in South Bend turned the portage into a two-sided hustle: shipping furs upstream to keep their bosses happy, while quietly buying cheap and selling dear to every traveler passing through.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Series 07-02: Indiana Jul 14, 2026

Show notes

Episode 2: Indiana

South Bend almost wasn't Indiana at all. When the Northwest Ordinance drew the territory's northern boundary, the future river bend sat squarely inside Michigan Territory — until an 1816 statehood petition, driven by Indiana's fear of being landlocked, pushed the border ten miles further north and swept the portage in almost as an afterthought.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Series 07-01: The Portage Jul 07, 2026

Show notes

Episode 1: The Portage

Twelve thousand years before Pierre Navarre built his cabin on the St. Joseph River, retreating glaciers carved a three-to-five-mile gap between two of the continent's great watersheds — and set South Bend's entire history in motion. In this episode, we trace the story of the St. Joseph-Kankakee portage from the last Ice Age through the arrival of French explorer Robert de LaSalle, the 1681 council beneath the Council Oak, and the fur traders who finally cashed in on one of North America's most valuable pieces of real estate.

Part of Series 7: Early South Bend

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

Series 06-08: Revolutionaries May 27, 2026

Show notes

Episode 8: Revolutionaries

In 1776, the United States' Founding Fathers launched a revolution. 250 years later, they're still here. They've been carved into marble and mountains. They are in your wallet. They have their own national holidays. And some of them have a street named after them in South Bend, Indiana. Learn about some famous revolutionaries' local ties, from Lafayette to Kosciuszcko, on this episode of A Bend in Time.

Part of Series 6: Street Names, Volume 1

A Bend in Time is presented by The History Museum in South Bend, Indiana and hosted by Aaron Helman.

This series is generously sponsored by the Doug Hunt Family.

Visit The History Museum's website at historymuseumsb.org

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