Timothy Edward Howard was an Indiana State Senate senator and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, writer, poet, professor of law, and Civil War veteran. He was also the first Notre Dame alumnus recipient of the Laetare Medal. He was severly wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. Howard was elected as a Democrat to two terms in the Indiana State Senate, serving from 1887 until 1892, but did not complete his second term because in 1892 he became a member of the state Supreme Court. Howard also was president of the Northern Indiana Historical Society, and in 1907 he wrote a history of St. Joseph County.