Into market: the first entries in the county were made on this ground

SPRING 1830 — 1836 AND AFTER

Surveyed and ceded, the ground could be bought — and the county's market opened here: Chapman's county history states the opening plainly: "The lands in St. Joseph county, although ceded to the United States Government some years previous by the Pottawatomie Indians, did not come into market until the spring of 1830. The first entries made were on the 19th day of April, of the same year." The first two entries Chapman names are both on this ground, in Section 11 of Township 38 North, Range 3 East — Harris Township, a mile and a fraction below the state line: John Johnston entered the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter, and Samuel Bell the southeast quarter of the southwest quarter, forty acres each. Bell is the son-in-law who came with Jacob Harris to the prairie that same year; the entry book and the settlement are one event read in two records. "Other entries rapidly followed these," Chapman adds, "so that during the first year a large quantity of the most valuable land in the county was taken up." In the western part of the county the same account reports the market's end as well as its beginning: "By the year 1836, about all the Government land was taken up. The land office was at Crawfordsville." The Mishawaka record carries the office sequence whole: offerings through the Fort Wayne and Crawfordsville offices before 1833; the La Porte land office opened in 1833, its first sale on 12 August 1833, its district embracing St. Joseph among nineteen counties; the office moved to Winamac in 1839 and closed on 31 January 1855 — the district's tract books, indexed at the Indiana Archives, hold this ground's entries section by section, and are named in this section's notes as the settling source for the entry pattern beyond the named first two.

The speculation era reached this ground at farm size, and its bust is printed at the same size. The townsite speculation of the decade — Hurd and Earl, the iron-works town, the rival plats — is Mishawaka's record, four miles south; here the entries the record names are forty- and eighty-acre farm entries taken by the men who settled them, Hardman's family failing to raise the price of eighty acres of prairie being the era's ground truth for this township. No engrossing speculator in these townships' farm land is named in any source reached. The bust came regardless: the county chronology in the 1875 atlas enters, in these years, a reign of "wild cat" money and a financial panic, and the entries of 1830–1836 had by then already done their work — the government land was taken up, and what remained to alienate was the reserved ground of the state entry above: the school sections, sold by the state's own machinery, and the road selections at the frame's corner. The closing state of the map is the closing entry of this section.

Sources:

1. Chas. C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), "First Entries of Land" — the market opening of spring 1830, the first entries of 19 April 1830 in Section 11, Township 38 North, Range 3 East (Johnston and Bell, forty acres each), the rapid entries of the first year; the same history's Olive Township account — the government land taken up by 1836, the land office at Crawfordsville.
2. Indiana Archives and Records Administration, "Land Records" and "LaPorte–Winamac Land Office Entries 1833–1855" — the earlier offerings through Fort Wayne and Crawfordsville, the La Porte office's first sale of 12 August 1833, the nineteen-county district, the move to Winamac in 1839, the closing of 31 January 1855, as carried in the Mishawaka record.
3. Higgins, Belden & Co., An Illustrated Historical Atlas of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1875) — the county chronology's entries for the wild-cat money and the financial panic.