The first postwar canvass: the field counted, and this ground still at zero

THE 1949-PATTERN POLK CANVASS

The postwar field, in the sister-city pattern, is a counted field — a directory year in which the returning trade can be enumerated seller by seller. Run at that pattern against the two townships, the 1949 canvass returns the same figure as the 1921 canvass, and the figure is the finding: no automobile seller is listed on Granger ground in the first postwar directory generation reached. The reasons are structural, and they print with the verdict. Granger still had no directory or classified section of its own — the canvass of its households ran inside the South Bend and Mishawaka volumes as rural listings, the form the BMV leg documents across the whole directory era. The postwar seller explosion happened where the franchises, the lots and the classified headings were: on South Bend's and Mishawaka's streets, whose postwar rows are those builds' whole. And the ground itself had not yet turned: Harris Township's population in 1950 was 1,313 (the Population leg's township series) — a farm township at the edge of two cities' dealer rows does not acquire a franchise point in the first postwar count, and it did not. TESTED NEGATIVE — a postwar seller seated in the CDP in the 1949-pattern canvass. Searched: the county directory record as inventoried by the Indiana State Library and carried in this build; the businesses leg's whole-period directory test; the location record of November 2026. Settler for any contrary claim: the 1949–50 Polk South Bend / Mishawaka classified sections read page by page (Indiana State Library microfilm; Ancestry directory collection).

Sources:

2. License Branch and Businesses — the directory frame and the whole-period negative, as cited in row 3's article.