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1830–1869 · Harris and Clay townships
In this era the business of the ground is the farm, and the roster is the settler roll read as owners: Jacob Harris — farm on Harris Prairie, raiser of the township's first wheat crop, harvested 1831. David Baldwin and Josephus Baldwin — farms, arrived 1828 or 1829 on Chapman's account (Howard: 1829 or 1830; the priority conflict prints in the People leg and is not re-litigated here). Samuel Bell — farm, Section 11, on a 19 April 1830 land entry, among the first in the county. John Johnston — the county's other first entrant of 19 April 1830, Section 11; no source read says he settled, farmed or sold on, so he is entered with no firm, at entry strength only. Adam Ringle — farm, Section 15, 1830. Joseph Buell, Henry Augustine and Hartzel (no Christian name in the record) — farms, Section 15, 1831. Jacob Meyer — farm, Section 15, bought 160 acres in 1831 and held 460 by 1880, the era's largest documented family accumulation; his son Joseph Meyer superintended the same 460 acres into the next generation. James Lowry — farm, Section 11, arrived 1833 (Howard's sketch) or 1834 (the 1875 directory); both years print. David Ringle, with his sons Samuel Ringle and Levi Ringle — farm household, Section 14, 1833 or 1834. Robert Kennedy — farm, Section 14, 1833, and the township's first schoolmaster. Arbogast Zaehnle — farm, Section 22, 1834. Asa D. Christian — family farm, Section 14, 1834; from 1847 his own cleared 160 acres, Section 24. George Hassig — farm and stock, 212 acres, Section 16, in the county from 1837. Joseph L. Krupp — blacksmith, his first trade, worked "for several years" from 1839 here and in Michigan, then farmer and stock-raiser, 440 acres, Section 9: the one named smith of the farm century, and he belongs to the prairie, not the later station village. Michael Smith — stock farm, 380 acres, Section 17, from 1842. E. M. Irvin — stock farm, Section 13, settled 1843. Warren Irvin — general produce farm, Section 24, settled 1847. John Koker — farm, 80 acres, Section 22, in Harris from 1847. John Ryan — farm, settled 1839 on the 1875 directory's line. W. Schaefer — grain farm, Section 22, a native of the county, settled 1848 on the directory's line. Ed. A. Metzger — grain and stock farm, Section 11, a native of the county, settled 1845 on the directory's line; the same man reappears as the village's feed-miller in 1884–85, below. Samuel Brooks — Clay Township farm, Section 30, whose barn held Clay's first election in 1840; a Samuel Brooks also stands among the county agricultural society's first directors of 12 June 1841, and Chapman does not say the two are one man — both appearances print, unmerged. William C. Kownover — pattern maker by first trade, then farmer from the spring of 1865 on Howard's sketch, or 1868 on the 1875 directory's line; both years print.
The Clay Township mill seats, from Chapman's Clay chapter as carried in the Food leg: John Weaver — saw-mill, carding-machine and fulling-mill on the Section 23 seat, the earlier keeper of that seat; a Mr. Graham (no first name in the record reached) — fulling-mill, Clay Township; S. Ulery — carding-machine, Clay Township. Their dates are not given, and the three stand again in the Undated bucket at line strength; they are placed here in the narrative because Chapman's chapter treats them as the seat's earlier generation, before the owner of 1880. The era's one institutional owner: the Congregation of Holy Cross, under Father Edward Sorin — St. Joseph's Farm, some 1,300 acres on Cleveland Road, dated 1867 in the township history (Goff, 1980) and described as a farm community founded in 1870 in the diocesan paper; both dates print, unreconciled, here and everywhere in this build. The farm fed the congregation's Notre Dame institutions for generations and is the direct ancestor of the Microsoft succession entered under 1990–present.