The era structure, in five parts: every fortune on this ground assigned to its era

1830–2026 · this section's frame

First era — trading and land: The ground's first wealth was land taken up at the April 1830 entries and after, and it stayed land: the settler fortunes of the People leg are farm accumulations — Jacob Meyer from a first purchase of 160 acres to 460 by 1880, Joseph L. Krupp at 440, Michael Smith at 380, the Slaughterbecks with 270 cleared (acreages as banked; no money figure published for any of them — see the sector article below). There is no treaty-era or fur-trade fortune in this era on this ground: rows #3 and #4 of the register stand TRUE SIZE on the banked tests — no individual reserve or grant on or near the CDP, and no trader's post seated here — and this frame does not manufacture one to fill the part.

Second era — industrial fortunes: Tested, and empty at seat. No iron, wheel, hosiery, brewing or meatpacking fortune was ever seated in Clay or Harris township on the record reached; the townships' industry was the farm, the creamery run and the corridor firm of a later century. The settler-industrial layer that does exist is agricultural and unsized, and it is carried in its own article below rather than promoted into an industrial era it never had.

Third era — the institutional holding: Between the family farms and the modern suburb stands the ground's one great accumulation, and it was not a family's: St. Joseph's Farm, the Congregation of Holy Cross's farm in Harris Township, at a little over 1,300 acres at the 1870 visitation — with the record's other figures (1,500 acres resolved and described in Brother Aidan's extracts; 1,320 in another account) printed standing in the Farms leg and reconciled nowhere, here or there. It worked from 1866/67 to 1995 for a university's table, and its wealth was output — wheat by the ten-thousands of bushels, herds in the hundreds — never a published money fortune. It is this section's largest holding and its clearest lesson: on this ground the biggest pool was a religious community's farm, held in common, sized in acres and bushels because that is how its keepers published it.

Fourth era — philanthropy: The turn from family account to foundation comes late and comes once, whole: the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation (1994), a Granger resident's family foundation that raised more than $45 million on Notre Dame's published figure and folded its work into the university's Ara Parseghian Medical Research Fund in May 2016. It is measured in its own article below. Around it, at boundary size, stand the county's pooled vehicles — the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County (since 1992, on its own published account) — which belong to the Charities section and are pointed to, not absorbed.

Fifth era — modern fortunes and the great transaction: The modern ground is a wealthy suburb whose residents' fortunes are, by the rule at this section's head, printed by role and published gift only (its own article below). The leg closes, as the register directs, with the great houses — or, on this ground, with the honest account of why the houses cannot be costed (closing article below).

Sources:

1. People leg (banked) — the settler acreages: Meyer 460, Krupp 440, Smith 380, the Slaughterbecks' 270 cleared.
2. Farms leg (banked) — St. Joseph's Farm, 1866/67–1995; the three acreages (c.1,300 / 1,320 / 1,500) printed unreconciled; Brother Aidan's Extracts 238 and the 1870 visitation, University of Notre Dame Archives.
3. Businesses leg (banked) — the Microsoft EKI purchase: $77.5 million, some 929 acres, the Tribune's sequence; the Holy Cross farm ground as the parcel sold.