Talbot Avenue Is Named for an Absolute Scoundrel

His crimes were shocking, his influence widespread — and his name still sits on the South Bend map.

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED JULY 16, 2025

You've probably driven past Talbot Avenue before. Probably more than once. It's right there, just south of the University of Notre Dame, carving a 500-foot diagonal line that skirts Fredrickson Park. There are maybe a dozen houses that line the street, and if you've noticed it before, you've probably never given it a second thought.

But thanks to Greta Fisher's terrific book, So Much Bad in The Best Of Us, you will never ever look at Talbot Avenue the same way ever again.

And you certainly won't look past it.

Talbot Avenue is named after John Talbot, quite possibly the seediest, most scandalous, and most sordid South Bender there ever was. The street got its name when Talbot bought the surrounding acreage, platted a little neighborhood, and named its primary thoroughfare in his own honor — far from the most braggadocious thing he ever did with his life.

As for how he got the money to buy that land? That's a whole scheme involving an infamous gang of train robbers and the almost certain receipt of stolen goods. In a scene of shady lawyering that would have made Saul Goodman blush, Talbot dodged the charges and kept on practicing law in South Bend. He usually represented criminals. He usually cheated to win.

He usually won.

That's chapter two of Fisher's book, and in every chapter afterward, John Talbot gets worse and worse.

And worse.

John Talbot was born in South Bend in 1869, just a few years after the Civil War and just a few years after South Bend officially became a city. His upbringing was unremarkable, certainly not the kind of childhood so terrible as to provide clues that would explain why he turned out the way he did.

There was the shady lawyering, the doctoring of trials, the intimidation of witnesses. There was the accepting of stolen goods as payment for his services. And there was the way that he always managed to wriggle his way out of facing the consequences of his actions…

…at least most of the time.

By the time Talbot was in his 30s, he was a political power player, propping his brother up for offices and ensuring politicians were firmly in his own pocket. Probably, the political system had been corrupt before Talbot got his sticky hands on it, but he perpetuated the system with a smile and may have even perfected it.

And somehow, that wasn't even the worst part.

Not even close.

The sordid masterpiece of Talbot's scandalous life was the founding of the Order of Owls in 1904, a fraternal organization that spread like wildfire throughout the nation. Local nests remain in a few places throughout the United States, and that's remarkable, because despite the upstanding language in the organization's charter, Talbot started the thing for exactly one reason:

To defraud anyone he could convince to join it.

And in case you're wondering, no, that's still not the worst of it.

There was his open admiration of the Ku Klux Klan, there was the sham hospital he started right here in South Bend to try to cover up the evidence of his fraudulent activity, and of course, you can't forget the sex trafficking.

I'm not going to spoil the end of the story. Fisher does a better job diving into the sordid life of John Talbot than I ever could. You should buy the book, and you should read it in one sitting, like I did.

And then, the next time you're cruising 23 from Ironwood into South Bend, you should notice Talbot Avenue. It's barely a tenth of a mile long. If you were armed with enough sidewalk chalk and you started listing all of John Talbot's transgressions along the road, you'd run out of street before you ran out of crimes.

Aaron Helman is an author, historian and adventurer from South Bend. You may have seen him around South Bend drinking coffee. Learn more about his work or check out his books at aaronhelman.com.