Will Longley: The South Bend Mayor Who Didn't Want to Be

Longley was mayor from 1888 - 1892, four more years than he ever wanted to serve

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED MAY 6, 2025

If Will Longley had gotten his way, there probably wouldn't be a street on South Bend's westside named after him today. There probably would never have been a picture made of him, and there certainly wouldn't be an article about him in the South Bend News-Times. If Will Longley had gotten his way, he would have never become Mayor of South Bend, would have never run for the office in the first place.

But Longley didn't get his way, and today, you can drive divided chunks of his road - Longley Avenue - on South Bend's westside, broken up in part by Kennedy Academy and Kennedy Park before being broken again by a neighborhood that never quite formed the way the planners hoped it would.

In some ways, Longley Avenue is a lot like its eponym. It just keeps going and picking up again, even though it feels like it really wants to quit.

The year is 1888, and William Longley is living a pretty terrific life. He's married to a woman that the newspapers have called “estimable”. He's got two young daughters and has just been promoted to manager at the old Brownfield store downtown after spending 20 years as the most visible cashier in the most popular grocery store in town. That's how everyone knows him, and pretty much everyone who knows him seems to like him a lot.

Longley is content with his life, his family, and his job. He enjoys hunting and fishing on the weekends, and he's known as the best shot the town has ever seen. He regularly wins the pigeon shoots, and he's got the trophies to prove it. Yessir, Longley's life is pretty good, and it sure doesn't seem like there's much that could ruin it.

Until they made him run for mayor.

Longley had been pretty clear that he wasn't interested in politics, and in the summer of 1888, he even told Democratic leaders specifically that “he did not want the nomination and if they did nominate him, he would not raise his hand or do anything to secure his election.”

So it might have come as some surprise to the apolitical grocer when the Democratic Convention chose Will Longley as their candidate, unanimously and on the first ballot. But Longley wasn't surprised by the vote. In fact, he wasn't even in the room when it happened, something the convention only realized when he didn't come forward to give a speech.

Unperturbed, the convention sent people into the streets to find Longley, where they tracked him down, took him by the elbows, and marched him into the convention hall. A defeated Longley muttered a speech that the Tribune graded like this:

When Longley won the office with 58% of the vote - a majority of 853 votes! - he still wasn't particularly interested in actually being the mayor. During his inaugural address, he mentioned that the office was “imposed upon” him and admitted that as few as two weeks ago, he had “no thought” of being involved with the city's municipal affairs. He called the job a “wholly unsought assignment” that he had “misgivings” about, then refrained from making any suggestions to the newly inaugurated Council, on account of “he was not familiar” with the current goings-on of the city.

He was not off to a great start.

Fortunately for Longley, the mayor's term only lasted two years in those days.

Unfortunately, he also won a second term.

Longley's four years in the mayor's office were some of the busiest in the young history of South Bend. There was the usual partisan political drama, the opening of South Bend's first public library, a high-profile blaze at the Indiana Paper Mill and another at Tippecanoe Place, inauguration of Benjamin Harrison, brought to you in part by underwear produced in the same factory that William Longley held an ownership stake in, and a political visit from James Blaine, the Man from Maine.

He also saw the dedication of Longley Avenue, laid and named in 1891, a year before his political tenure ended for good.

By the end of his four years, he'd had enough, and although the Democrats begged him to run again, Will Longley somehow managed to rebuff them. He left the Mayor's seat in 1892 and was never involved in politics again.

William Longley lived another 43 years after he left office. He died on August 17, 1935 and is buried in the Highland Cemetery.