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THE PATENT RECORD AS REACHED · A STATED NEGATIVE
The search: This section searched for a Black inventor with a documented Fort Wayne patent record — in the patent indexes as they are reachable online, in the Allen County genealogical society's people pages, and in the published material of the city's African/African-American Historical Society Museum as it could be reached — and located none. The negative is printed in full view rather than filled with a borrowed name, and its limits are stated with it: patent records of the period do not identify their holders by race, so this is a statement about the record as reached, not about the city's actual inventive life, and the standing routes to a deeper search are the Allen County Public Library's Genealogy Center and the Historical Society Museum's own collections. One nearby case is entered here only to keep it from being misfiled: Gloster John Garrett of Richmond, in Wayne County at the state's eastern edge, whose resilient spring automobile wheel was patented in 1914 on an application of 1912 — a well-documented Indiana Black inventor whose county is Wayne, a fact careless lists have been known to blur into Fort Wayne. He belongs to Richmond's history. Fort Wayne's own file on this seam stands open, and empty, and labeled.
Sources:
- The searches as described — patent indexes as reachable, ACGSI people pages, published African/African-American Historical Society Museum material as reached; no Fort Wayne Black inventor located.
- Black Legacy Project of Wayne County / IU East — Gloster John Garrett of Richmond, the spring-wheel patent record of 1912–1914, entered to fix the county distinction.