The story
Welcome to Wolcottville
Wolcottville straddles the line between LaGrange and Noble counties on the north branch of the Elkhart River. It grew around the mills George Wolcott began in 1837, became known for its seminary, and later sat at the crossing of two railroads.
The first settlers in the neighborhood were Philo Taylor, who arrived in February 1837 (or June 1836, by the 1882 history) and owned the water power on the Elkhart River, and George Wolcott, a native of Connecticut, who came with his wife Margaret in 1837 and bought it. Wolcott had money to spend and began on an extensive scale: a sawmill, finished in 1838, with a small set of millstones added a year or two later; a store in about 1839 with $1,000 of goods; and in 1845 a gristmill with two new runs of stones. At one time, the 1882 history says, he was engaged in seven occupations at once, milling, sawing, blacksmithing, storekeeping, coopering, farming and making potash, with some twenty men at work and fifteen buildings in the village.
The village was laid out in thirty-three lots and recorded in October 1849, by the 1882 history; Ford (1920) says it was surveyed in 1849 for Joseph and Elizabeth Keasey and recorded April 6, 1853. Its south part lies in Noble County. A Baptist society was organized in July 1837 and built a frame church in the village in 1851; the Methodists organized in 1839 and built in 1874. L. L. Wildman opened the second store in 1849 and in 1873 a private bank, Wildman’s Exchange Bank. The 1882 history estimated the population at 20 in 1840, 100 in 1850, 300 in 1860 and 500 in 1880, and called it, on the word of commercial travelers, ‘one of the liveliest business points of the size in the State.’
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In 1851, at Wolcott’s request and that of former Governor William Slade of Vermont, the National Board of Education sent out Miss Susan Griggs, who taught in a makeshift room until Wolcott built a seminary building at his own expense. The Wolcottville Seminary, under Miss Griggs until 1869, trained many teachers before it was absorbed by the public schools. Wolcott sold his mills about 1851; a rake factory, tannery, foundry, carriage works and planing mill followed.
The Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad, which reached LaGrange in 1870, was running through the town by 1874, and the Wabash built across the south of the county in 1892–93, so Wolcottville stood at a junction of two lines; the Wabash depot was on the Noble County side. Waterworks were installed in 1908 and a brick high school stood on the hill north of town. In 1920 Ford counted about 700 people, two banks, the Gazette, and Baptist, Methodist and Evangelical churches. Wolcott’s own house, built about 1840, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020. The 2020 census counted 1,004 people.