Before the branch: plates by mail, and the notary's desk

1913–1928

For the first motorists of Harris and Clay townships, there was no branch to go to: Indiana began issuing state license plates in 1913, and the transaction ran by mail. The owner sent his application to the Secretary of State in Indianapolis and waited for the plates to come back — a wait long enough, and uncertain enough, that when the Hoosier State Automobile Association planned its local service branches in 1921, the Kokomo Tribune explained the appeal in exactly those terms: a branch keeping plates on hand meant "the car owner would not have to send his application [to] the Indiana Secretary of State and then wait an indefinite period for their arrival." That was the pre-branch course for every farm household on this ground: the application went south by post, and the plates came back the same way.

The machinery professionalized through the 1920s under the Secretary of State's automobile department. By August 1923 roughly 240,000 of the 1924 plates had already been manufactured — made at Newport, Kentucky — and shipped out to "branches of the automobile department in various parts of the state," to be held until the sale opened in December; H. D. McClelland, the department's manager, gave the figures to the press. Branch offices, in other words, existed as the department's distribution points by the early 1920s, seated where the department seated them — in the county's cities, not its crossroads. Whether the automobile association's plate-issuing service ever operated a counter in St. Joseph County is not settled by the record reached and is carried as a named gap in the closing article.

The other channel was the notary's desk, and the state's own words mark its limits. In December 1928 Mark W. Rhoads, director of the automobile license department in the Secretary of State's office, "strongly advised Indiana automobile owners to obtain their 1929 plates early" and "urged further that application be made at the official license branch offices and not from this or that person who may wish to act as a notary," because "the loss of titles, mistakes in titles, and mistakes in information required for records" made the official branches, "where trained help is maintained," essential. The warning only makes sense against a countryside full of intermediaries — notaries, dealers, garagemen — taking plate applications as a sideline, which is how a township like Harris or Clay, with no branch of its own, transacted its licensing in the system's first decades. The branches Rhoads urged motorists toward stood, for this county, in South Bend.

Sources:

1. Kokomo Tribune, July 13, 1921 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — the Hoosier State Automobile Association's planned branches and the mail-order course they were meant to replace.
2. Muncie Post-Democrat, August 3, 1923 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — approximately 240,000 1924 plates shipped to automobile-department branches; H. D. McClelland, manager; plates manufactured at Newport, Ky.
3. The Daily Banner (Greenfield), December 27, 1928 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — Mark W. Rhoads, director of the automobile license department, Secretary of State's office, on official branches versus notaries.
4. Indiana plate references (ShopLicensePlates county-code key; the Indiana plate-history record) — state-issued plates begin 1913.