The 1875 roll: the patrons' directory

1875 · Harris Township patrons' directory, Illustrated Historical Atlas, p. 103

What this roll is: the patrons' directory of the 1875 county atlas is the nearest thing Harris Township has to a census of its substantial farmers in that decade — name, section, occupation, nativity and the year settled in the county. The patrons already profiled above from the histories are not repeated; what follows is the residue, at the line strength the directory itself gives, with two names printed as the scan reads them and flagged uncertain rather than silently corrected.

The roll: Jacob D. Byrer, Section 17, farmer, a native of Germany, settled 1862. Dan N. Dressler (the atlas prints "Dressier"), Section 16, stock farmer, Stark County, Ohio, settled 1861. A. J. Foster, Section 19, farmer — and, the directory notes, County Superintendent of Schools, an office that stands in the Government leg; the man stands here as a Section 19 farmer of Cass County, Michigan, origin. Jacob Hofterbert, as printed — the name is uncertain in the scan and is carried as printed — Section 16, produce farmer, Germany, settled 1865. Charles Lutlweg, as printed and likewise uncertain, Section 15, produce farmer, Germany, settled 1857. Ed. A. Metzger, Section 11, grain and stock farmer, a native of St. Joseph County itself, settled 1845 — a second-generation man already holding a patron's line at his birth-year's distance from the settlement. John Ryan, Section 24, farmer in wheat, grain and stock, Ireland, settled 1839 — among the earliest settlement years in the directory. W. Schaefer, Section 22, grain farmer, a native of this county, settled 1848. John W. Smith, Section 21, farmer in corn, wheat and oats, France, settled 1835.

Two line-size names from the histories, carried here so the roll is complete: Charles Murray, a married man "from 'Dutch Island,' in Harris township," on Howard's Clay chapter — a Harris man who taught the first school in Clay Township, in Mr. Eyler's house; his teaching stands in the Schools section, his Harris origin stands here. And Thomas Kiser, "of Granger, Indiana," named in Howard's pages as the husband of Rhoda (Morrell) Kiser — a Granger residence line inside another family's sketch (the Zigler sketch, whose subject is Lakeville's, not this section's), printed at exactly the strength of the line that carries it.

Sources:

1. Illustrated Historical Atlas of St. Joseph County, Indiana (Higgins, Belden & Co., 1875), Harris Township patrons' directory, p. 103, read first-hand.
2. Howard (1907), Clay Township chapter (for Murray) and vol. 2 biographical sketches (for Kiser).