FORT WAYNE

city, seat (1824) of Allen county, northeastern Indiana, U.S., at the confluence of the St. Marys and St. Joseph rivers where they form the Maumee River, 118 miles (190 km) northeast of Indianapolis. The waters, spanned by 21 bridges, divide the town into three parts. The place was prominent in frontier history. In the late 17th century the French built a trading post (later fort) at this natural stronghold on the site of Kekionga, once the chief town of the Miami Indians. It was attacked and taken by the English (1760) and then by Indians under Pontiac (1763). A log stockade constructed in 1794 by General Anthony Wayne after the Battle of Fallen Timbers, near what is now Toledo, Ohio (reconstructed 1975), gave the town its name. Fort Wayne's industrial growth began with the building of the Wabash and Erie Canal in the 1830s and was stimulated in the 1850s when the railway came. The town's easy access to raw materials and markets has encouraged the manufacture of a wide range of machinery, including automotive and electrical equipment and parts and diamond-set cutting tools. Fort Wayne is noted as a centre of higher learning, its institutions including Concordia Theological Seminary (1846), Indiana Institute of Technology (1930), Indiana UniversityPurdue University at Fort Wayne (1917), and St. Francis College (1890). The Lincoln National Life Foundation houses a large collection of Abraham Lincoln memorabilia. John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), the pioneer orchard planter, is buried near the War Memorial Coliseum. Inc. town, 1829; city, 1840. Pop. (1992 est.) city, 176,751; Fort Wayne MSA, 465,968.