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1871–1920 · BOUNDARY SPINE WITH THE GROUND'S OWN BRIDGES
How missed: in pieces. No firm was carried across an era bridge whole. The county's type case of the bridge is the Knoblock works, and Howard's 1907 county history carries it in consecutive sections, which is how it escaped notice: §9 gives the Knoblock Brothers' Manufacturing Company (organized April 18, 1871) on its way to the South Bend Chilled Plow Company, and §8, printed just before it, gives the same family's second act. The Knoblock-Heidman Company, Howard writes, "has been very successful in the manufacture of electrical apparatus. The present owners and managers are Otto M. Knoblock, William H. Miller, and George H. Heidman. The company was originally organized May 17, 1900, with a capital of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, as the Miller-Knoblock Electric Manufacturing Company, the incorporators being John C. Knoblock, Otto M. Knoblock, William H. Miller, Horace G. Miller, Albert W. Morrell and C. Warren Sheets." One family of implement-makers thus spans the whole bridge the checklist names: wagons and reapers in 1871, chilled plows in 1878, and electrical apparatus — the magneto trade of the early automobile age — in 1900, under a name that itself records the succession, Miller-Knoblock becoming Knoblock-Heidman as the Millers' and Heidman's generation succeeded the founding Knoblocks. The site's course completes the bridge in brick: when the South Bend Bait Company moved in 1920 to 1108 South High Street, it moved into "the former Miller-Knoblock wagon factory which had most recently been the Burn-Oil engine plant" — wagons, then magnetos and engines, then fishing tackle, one factory carrying three eras of the county's making.
Franklin E. Lowry came to Granger village in 1882 and built its trade across the farm era's whole span: the mercantile business from 1883, then grain dealing and the elevator, with the postmastership (thirteen years) and the trusteeship riding the same course — a store that became a grain business as the village's trade changed under it, carried in the banked People leg. Triangle Truss manufactured on the future Big C Lumber site from 1972 to 1976, the Big C facility opened on the ground in March 1981, and in February 1994 the company repurchased the former Triangle Truss location — a site that bridges the farm era and the corridor era in a single parcel, carried in the banked Businesses leg. And at boundary size, the subdividers' bridge: Whitcomb & Keller, the South Bend realty firm of Fred W. Keller (mayor of South Bend in 1913), which built rental houses from 1904, laid out Sunnymede with its resident architect H. Russell Stapp from 1917, and was still building as the Whitcomb and Keller Corporation in 1957 — realty becoming subdivision across fifty years, the pattern of which Granger's own Zook Realty course (banked) is the local, smaller instance.
Sources: Howard (1907), vol. 1, §§8–9 (the Knoblock-Heidman Company and the Miller-Knoblock organization of May 17, 1900, with capital and incorporators as quoted; the Knoblock Brothers' Manufacturing Company, April 18, 1871). South Bend Bait Company history (the 1920 move to the former Miller-Knoblock wagon factory, most recently the Burn-Oil engine plant). Notre Dame, Building South Bend property records (Whitcomb and Keller houses of 1904–1957; Stapp resident architect from 1917; Fred Keller partner, mayor 1913). Banked Notable People and Businesses (the Lowry course; the Triangle Truss–Big C site course; Zook Realty).