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1828
Founded: 1828 for both — single-source, thin. The only mention found for either business, after targeted searching, is one sentence-pair in the News-Sentinel city history: "Madore Truckery opened his cooper shop that year [1828, the year after the gristmill passage]. Holloway Cushman started a blacksmith shop on the south side of Berry Street east of Calhoun Street." No second source for either firm was found in the History Center blog, ACGSI timelines/first-things pages, Griswold, Brice, Dawson's Charcoal Sketches, or the 1880 county history extracts searched.
Truckery cooper shop: A cooper shop makes and repairs barrels (the News-Sentinel chapter's own vocabulary note). Founder name as printed: Madore Truckery — the spelling is as printed and may be a garbled rendering in transmission; no directory, census or newspaper spelling was found to check it against, so the name is carried exactly as the single source prints it, flagged, not "corrected." Location, course and fate: no record found.
Cushman blacksmith shop: Founder Holloway Cushman; location is the one firm fact beyond the year — south side of Berry Street, east of Calhoun Street. He is not to be conflated with Benjamin Cushman, the Fort Wayne associate judge and Wayne Lodge officer of the same years: any relationship between the two men is not established on the sources in hand. Course and fate: no record found. Dawson's 1838 sketches name other smiths (Philip C. Cook, Lewis Wolke at the forge) but no Cushman shop, which neither confirms nor closes this record.
Next evidence route (both): the 1858–59 Williams' directory and ACGSI files at ACPL — a 30-year gap a directory can only close if either shop survived that long; otherwise these two may remain single-mention records permanently, and the entry should say so rather than grow.
Sources:
- News-Sentinel city history (the sole mention of both businesses) — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/rhist7.php