Why Is It Called Frances Street?

Finally, an end to years of confusion… and another South Bend Street named after a historic woman!

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED OCTOBER 5, 2026

There's a neighborhood off of Eddy Street called Sorin's Subdivision. You've driven past it before. You've parked on its streets when you went to a football game. You might not know it well, but you know it when you see it.

The streets were originally named after Catholic saints, and a few men that Father Sorin considered saints even if the Vatican didn't. Some of those roads are still there: St. Peter, St. Louis, and St. Joseph for starters.

Then there's Frances Street, named after a local South Bend woman. She's still there amid a grid of saints, although she is not one of them…

…but Father Sorin might beg to disagree.

Father Sorin and his men had been on the road for nearly two weeks, walking through northern Indiana during a particularly frigid November in 1842. They had horses, but not enough for all of them. They took turns riding.

In South Bend, they arrived at a house they'd been looking for. They knocked on the door. Their hosts welcomed them into the home and invited them to warm themselves at their hearth. While the men exchanged pleasantries and talked specifics, a woman dashed in and out of the kitchen bringing hot tea and hot food to the shivering men from far away.

Her name was Frances Coquillard. Her husband got the credit for founding South Bend.

She got a street name.

Frances Comparet was born in Detroit in 1805. Her father was a fur trader, which was a fair way to describe most of Detroit in those days. She learned the business by watching it happen: how to strike a deal, how to guarantee a fair price, how to negotiate with Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Native Americans differently.

Her dad entered into a partnership with Alexis Coquillard, and soon enough she entered into partnership with the man too. They were married in 1824, and whether it was love, convenience, or arrangement; it all seemed to work okay for them.

Frances Coquillard was the first European-descended woman to settle in South Bend, and according to the histories of the day, she might be the finest woman who ever lived there.

It's tough to say how much of it is entirely true, but the stories remember that she was counselor, doctor, protector, and friend to the Native Americans of her day. They remember that she was the person every settler woman looked to in order to learn how to live in this new town.

Father Sorin, for his part, remembered her as calm and strong in the face, with black hair parted down the middle and pulled tight into a knot at the back of her neck.

There's been a lot of confusion about how Frances Street came to its name. There is, of course, a very famous St. Francis — but he's got a different spelling and a different story. There's also a less famous St. Frances, who is the patron saint of automobile drivers and widows.

But of course, South Bend's Frances Street is spelled with an'E', and unlike every other sainted street in that neighborhood, it doesn't have an 'St.' in front of it.

Just Frances.

And for a while, that was kind of a problem for people.

That's because the original plat of Sorin's Subdivision did have a St. Francis Street, and having two streets with similar sounding names brought about a host of entirely predictable confusions.

Eventually St. Francis Street became Howard Street, but Frances Street remained, and folks around South Bend spent a few years mixing using the two named confusedly and indiscriminately before they found better things to think about than how old streets got their names.

Here's the kicker:

Father Sorin didn't put Frances Street on the map. It was already there when he bought the land and built the neighborhood. The road had been chosen and named by Samuel Cottrell, who was progressive enough to recognize that at least one pioneer woman deserved some recognition, even if the gesture would later be confused and forgotten.

When Father Sorin built his neighborhood and gridded it with streets named after saints, he probably smiled when he recognized that there was one who was already there.