Michiana's Uncle Sam: The Namesake of Ireland Road
St. Joseph County's first elected assessor might have been the most well-known man in town
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED NOVEMBER 4, 2024
Let's get this out of the way. The name of Ireland Road has nothing to do with the Emerald Isle. It has nothing to do with the Fighting Irish and even less to do with the University of Notre Dame. In fact, it's a name that predates the founding of the University by more than a decade and one that probably predates the first Irishmen to arrive in South Bend.
Samuel Irvin Houston Ireland probably came from Irish roots, but by the time he was born in Kentucky in 1807, he was American if he was anything. Generations of his grandparents had lived in Massachusetts and North Carolina and had seen America through Revolution. There's as much English in his lineage as there is Irish, and there's more Native American than either.
Sam Ireland came from pioneer stock, the youngest of four born to a family of homesteaders in Bourbon County, Kentucky. Their journey took them to the nowhere parts of western Ohio, where Sam Ireland married his cousin Sarah in 1828, before he immediately set off onto the world's least romantic honeymoon. Sam left his new wife behind and spent a few months journeying with his good friend Thomas P. Bulla in order to scout new lands to the west.
Bulla and Ireland must have liked what they'd seen in St. Joseph County. They went home, retrieved their families, and came back to build a new life in the rough and untamed parts of St. Joseph County. The Irelands cleared a farm along Willow Creek, northeast of what would become Mishawaka, just four years ahead of the city's founding. Sam and Sarah Ireland would later be remembered as Mishawaka's very first residents.
Sam Ireland might have been a homesteader, but he was not a loner. He kept a wide social network and was politically active from the moment he broke ground on his land. He was an early participant in the Log Cabin campaign of 1840, a successful political effort that put the Hoosier William Henry Harrison into the White House, at least for a few months.
As St. Joseph County became more mature, Sam Ireland ran for office and became the county's first assessor. His first job was to catalog every single property in the county and correspond with every single property owner. It's not an exaggeration to say that for a brief moment in history, Sam Ireland knew every family in St. Joseph County and that every family knew Sam Ireland.
By all accounts, they all loved him. From Walkerton to Osceola and Lakeville to German Township, Sam Ireland had received a folksy nickname that would stick with him for the rest of his life. He'd become St. Joseph County's very own “Uncle Sam.” The moniker dotted his correspondence and was his most common address whenever the man was mentioned in the newspaper:
For as much as pioneer-style homesteading had defined Uncle Sam's early life, it turns out he was more cosmopolitan than his roots would indicate. By 1851, he'd taken a job in sales with the St. Joseph Iron Works in Mishawaka and built a downtown home for his family at 114 North West Street, his home abutted by the original Mishawaka High School. Sam and Sarah Ireland had five children, all girls, and raised three of them into adulthood.
Ireland maintained his civic commitment, serving several terms as a township assessor and working as the first sexton at the Mishawaka City Cemetery. The newspapers regularly follow the tragedy, the sorrow, and the mundane of Uncle Sam's illustrious life. They note that he owns “one of the oldest clocks in the county.” They mourn when he loses a daughter in 1872. They celebrate the Irelands' 50th Wedding Anniversary, and they wait on pins and needles when Sam Ireland teeters on the edge of death in 1885. He'd recover from that scare and live another six years, long enough for the Tribune to advocate that such a man as Uncle Sam Ireland should be “superannuated” from paying taxes.
For as long as he had original pioneer friends, Sam Ireland kept close ties with them. When the county hosted larger and grander Fourth of July parties each year, Uncle Sam was more apt to retreat to spend time at the Old Settlers' Meeting. They'd remember the place they'd arrived at, marvel at all of the ways it had changed, and sit contentedly knowing that they'd played a part in all of it.
