The Goshen City Bar Association (GCBA) was founded on September 20, 1917. As recorded in the Goshen Weekly News Times in its September 14, 1917 issue, “Bar associations have existed in Elkhart and other surrounding cities for many years, but no effort had ever been made to form a similar organization in Goshen.” Among preexisting bar associations was GCBA’s predecessor—the Elkhart County Bar Association—and the Elkhart City Bar Association (which, according to the December 26, 1907 issue of the Elkhart Daily Review, “practically included the former”). 

 

The Elkhart County Bar Association wasn’t particularly active in the lead-up to GCBA’s formation. One entry in the 1916 Standard History of Elkhart County, Indiana (Vol. I) indicates that the Elkhart County Bar Association was “called together seldom…when a brother dies a meeting is always called to pass suitable resolutions; and that is about all its stated function.”

 

When GCBA was founded in 1917, it kicked off with a flurry of discussion relating to attorney’s office hours, fees, and other activities. But this first iteration of GCBA proved short-lived, as it (along with the Elkhart City Bar Association) was absorbed back into a unified Elkhart County Bar Association in 1923. The unified Elkhart County Bar Association lasted for about a half-century until the 1970s, when it divided again into GCBA and the Elkhart City Bar Association.

 

A spirit of friendly rivalry persists between the two bar associations, exemplified by periodic softball contests between them.