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Arrived 1828 or 1829 (Chapman) / 1829 or 1830 (Howard)
The tie, exactly: settlers of Harris Prairie at its first settlement — and the one genuine priority dispute in this section, printed whole. Howard (1907) places the Baldwins "in the same year or the year previous" to Jacob Harris's 1830 arrival, which is to say 1829 or 1830, and after Harris in his sentence. Chapman (1880), writing twenty-seven years earlier and within living memory of the men, calls them probably the first settlers of the township: Josephus Baldwin himself stated that he and David came in 1828 or 1829 and were already here when Harris came. Both accounts stand in this entry unreconciled, because the record does not reconcile them: the difference is between a settler's own statement taken down in 1880 and a county historian's arrangement of it in 1907.
The course: beyond the arrival, the histories give the brothers almost nothing — no sections, no families, no deaths. They are the prairie's first household on Chapman's telling and its second sentence on Howard's, and the file leaves them at that strength: two names, one disputed year, and the distinction of having been here, on the earlier account, before the man the prairie is named for.
Sources:
- Chapman (1880), Harris Township chapter — "probably the first settlers"; Josephus Baldwin's own statement of 1828 or 1829.
- Howard (1907), ch. V, §3 — the Baldwins in or just before 1830, after Harris in the roll's order.