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Born 16 April 1862, Mishawaka
The tie, exactly: a Harris Township farmer whose birthplace is Mishawaka, and whose entry says so in its first line, because this section's seat test cuts in every direction: a man is not made a Granger native by farming Granger ground, any more than a Granger resident is made a Mishawaka person by a mailing address. Lerner was born in Mishawaka on 16 April 1862 and was on the farm from the age of eight; the farm is his Granger tie, and it is enough.
The course: his father, John Lerner Sr., born in Germany on 7 February 1830, a slate roofer who came to America in 1852 and worked thirteen years in the Mishawaka woolen mills, bought the marsh farm and died 8 November 1883. The son built it into "Maple Front Farm" — 120 acres (eighty in Section 25 of Harris, forty in Section 36 of Penn) plus eighty-three acres in Section 1 of Penn — and made dairying his specialty for thirteen years, standing as an original stockholder and director of the Osceola creamery. His son Ernest was born 17 November 1889, in Mishawaka. The marsh acres Lerner drained and dairied are the same north-edge ground the Land leg of this build treats as the township's wetland margin; the man and the ground explain each other, and both legs print their half.
Sources:
- Howard (1907), vol. 2, biographical sketches — the Lerner sketch whole.