Flour first: the first wheat of 1831, and the mill that stood outside the line

1831–1880 · HARRIS PRAIRIE AND THE RIVER STRIP OF CLAY

The food history of this ground begins with a wheat crop and a missing mill. Chapman's county history (1880), in its Harris Township chapter, records that Jacob Harris, who came in 1830 and settled on Harris Prairie, "raised the first wheat that was cut in the township, it being harvested in 1831," and that his neighbor Jacob Meyer, come the spring of 1831, helped cut the crop. Wheat is a miller's grain: a township that grows it needs a grist-mill or a road to one, and Harris Township never had the mill. Howard's history (1907), read first-hand for this build, states the negative for the township's own creeks in so many words — no mill seat rose on them — and the Land leg of this build carries the same finding for Juday Creek, the designated place's one stream of any size. The prairie's flour was ground elsewhere for the whole of the farm century.

Where it was ground, the record does name — at the edge of the ground, not inside it. Chapman's Clay Township chapter seats the township's one grist-mill on section 23, on the St. Joseph River, in Clay's western river strip by the colleges, outside the designated place: in 1880 it was owned by John F. Curly, of South Bend, and "at present the mill is not running; it was built several years ago by Jonas Harris" — a South Bend miller of that name, not Jacob Harris of the prairie, and the two men are not to be merged. Before the grist-mill, on the same seat, John Weaver — the German Baptist preacher among Clay's first settlers — "had built a saw-mill on the same location; Mr. Weaver also had a carding-machine and fulling-mill, and for a time did quite an extensive business." Chapman adds a second fulling-mill near where St. Mary's stood, run by a man named Graham, and a carding-machine run by S. Ulery — a wool-working cluster at the river, of which only the grist-mill ground food. The chapter's summary is the township's whole industrial epitaph: "there is very little or nothing to add to the business interests of the township by way of mills or villages, there being but one of the former, and none of the latter." The designated place's own flour foundation is thus a boundary fact, printed at boundary size: its grain was real from 1831, and its mill stood outside its line, on the river, by the colleges.

Sources:

1. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), Harris Township chapter: Jacob Harris's first wheat, harvested 1831, Jacob Meyer helping to cut it; Clay Township chapter: the section 23 grist-mill (John F. Curly, owner, idle in 1880; built by Jonas Harris), John Weaver's earlier saw-mill, carding-machine and fulling-mill on the same seat, Graham's fulling-mill, S. Ulery's carding-machine, and the chapter's mills-and-villages summary — read first-hand from the published text (archive.org, historyofstjosep00chap).
2. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), Harris Township section, as read first-hand in this build's Spine and Businesses passes: no mill seat on the township's creeks.
3. This build's Land leg: Juday Creek's course and drainage record, carrying no mill seat.