A stone obelisk reaches up into the sky in City Cemetery, a weathered marker of the last spot an elderly couple would share together in South Bend’s oldest final resting place. The cemetery was built on land donated by Lathrop Taylor in 1832, making it only a year younger than the city itself. Lathrop himself is buried there, along with Schuyler Colfax, family members of the Studebakers and Powells, and soldiers from the Revolutionary War. But the originally unassuming grave now marked by a pointed stone monument and brass placard is the final resting place of couple Mary & James McKinley, grandparents to former president William McKinley and early settlers to the South Bend region.
Their meandering journey in 1844 took them 311 miles from the town of Lisbon, Ohio, all the way to South Bend’s western edge where they rented acreage and built a homestead. “No one knew for where they were bound nor their purpose in coming,” wrote reporter Lewis in 1921, “Perhaps they themselves had no particular destination in view…Perhaps, then, the love of the wanderlust was their sole reason for coming west” (South Bend News-Times). Already getting on in age at the time of their grand voyage across the midwest, Mary & James made South Bend their home for only a handful of years before both were overcome with typhoid fever. Their tragic love story ends in that home they built together on the edge of town. Mary fell ill first, and James shortly after. For three weeks they were at each other’s sides, constant companions, but on that late summer day, August 20th, 1847, within hours of each other they both faded peacefully from waking life, on their 43rd wedding anniversary.
The couple made their mark on the town of South Bend in their own quiet way, leaving behind a “saddened village” at the news of their passing. They were laid to rest side-by-side, as together in the afterlife as they were in their journeys through life and across the wild terrains of the early midwestern frontier. The memorial obelisk can be spotted among other ancient headstones in the cemetery, some speculating that its construction was the first presidential act of William McKinley as a way to honor his grandparents. The monument still stands, a testament to the long, storied life Mary & James shared together and to the hope that love can carry on long after we are laid to rest.
References
City of South Bend Venues Parks & Arts. (2025). City Cemetery. SBPVA.
Schuyler Colfax Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution. (1927). Historic background of South Bend and St. Joseph County in Northern Indiana. Schuyler Colfax Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution, South Bend, Indiana.
Lewis, G. (1921, Oct. 2). McKinley’s grandparents early settlers in St. Joseph County; both died on same day, their wedding anniversary; bodies lie in City Cemetery. South Bend News-Times.
Grave of McKinley’s grand parents in South Bend. (1901, Sep. 14). South Bend News-Times.
Cahill, A. (1935, Aug. 11). May beautify City Cemetery with WPA aid. South Bend News-Times.
