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1849–1917 · Chapman; Howard; 1875 Atlas; Polk 1880–81, 1882–83, 1884–85, 1916–17; Directory of Indiana Manufacturers (1889)
The first mill stands at township class, exactly where LK-2 left it. The 1875 Atlas's Union Township directory prints "Earl & Gilmore" among the township's business entries with a steam saw mill dated 1849. No carrier reached — Chapman, Howard, the Atlas, the Polk volumes, or the web record — names the mill's site as townsite or township ground, and no carrier identifies "Gilmore" further. Howard's Earl genealogy, read whole for this section, is lavish on the family and silent on any partner named Gilmore. The mill sentence therefore prints as LK-2 banked it: the township's first mill, 1849, steam, partners Earl and a Gilmore the record does not identify. G-LK2-3 stands. Settlers unchanged: the GLO tract books and the 1850 census of manufactures for Union Township.
Coquillard's Mill belongs to the township's French name and a hired builder: the mill was built and run from the summer of 1854 to about 1864 by A. W. Shidler (Chapman prints the name "Shiddler"; Polk, "Shideler") — the same surname the drainage record later attaches to the Hoffman-Shidler Ditch north of town (Farms & Crops carries the ditch; the link printed in both files is a shared surname and nothing more). Shidler then ran a saw-mill on his own account — Polk still lists "Shideler A W, saw mill" in 1880–81 and 1882–83, gone by 1884–85 — and Adam Shidler's separate saw mill near Lakeville, operated in 1861 (Howard: Christian R. Fogle hauled lumber from it to South Bend for a year), is not merged with A. W.'s: no carrier equates the two Shidlers. Alexis Coquillard's own course is South Bend's file; what stands here is his mill, on this ground. The 1889 manufacturers' directory lists an "Alex Coquillard, saw mill" at Lakeville — whether the same works, a successor, or a separate mill, no carrier states.
The township's mill cluster stands in the Atlas and Howard at township class: the Slough brothers' steam saw mill in Section 19 — David and Peter Slough bought 240 acres about 1871, removed their mill to it, and operated it sixteen years doing general custom business, "the only mill within a distance of three miles"; Peter bought David's interest and ran it alone four more years, until 1895, its product sold in South Bend chiefly to Singer, Birdsell and Studebaker, five to seven men employed — with Valentine, Adam and Michael Slough and William Alexander carried in the Atlas's mill rows beside them, and A. F. Stull ("engaged in milling and lumbering… ever since" 1858, Chapman) and Orris J. Simpson in Sections 19 and 21. (The Slough & Alexander mills at Bourbon and Carson, where Peter Slough first worked, are Marshall County ground — pointer only, not imported.)
The village benches, and the count conflict they carry: Chapman's 1880 census counts the village with "a saw-mill and a grist-mill" — one of each. Polk's 1880–81 entry names three saw mills — Hildebrand & Co (1880–81 and 1882–83, gone by 1884–85), Knepp & Houser (all three 1880s editions; "Knepp & Hauser" in the 1889 directory), and Shideler A W — plus the one flour mill, Clenny & Eldred (all three editions; "grist and saw mill" by 1889). Both counts stand, printed whole: a census of kinds against a canvass of firms is the likeliest shape of the difference, but the build prints the pair, not the explanation. The senior partner of the flour mill is identified at name-match strength only — William Clenny, whose farm south of Lakeville Chapman dates to spring 1853 and who "moved to village of Lakeville 1873"; no carrier states the identification outright, and the Clenny name itself travels in a second spelling (Clenny/Clenney) across the carriers, registered whole. Eldred survives only inside the firm name, unidentified in every carrier reached. Lock & Lightfoot first appear in 1884–85; by the 1889 manufacturers' directory the names stand separate in the same Lakeville list — "Lightfoot & Co, saw mill" and "Wm Lock, saw mill" — in a list that names six mill firms at Lakeville, the fullest single count the mill record carries, Isaac Dribellis's saw mill among them, a name in no other carrier reached. The Knepp & Houser line carries its own conflict: the same firm stands under both Lakeville and North Liberty in the same Polk editions (the North Liberty file carries its side of the pair) — one firm with two towns' custom, or a canvass placed twice; both listings print, unmerged. By 1916–17 the bench lists no mill of any kind — but it lists the Lakeville Lumber Co.: the trade outliving the mills, in corporate form, two generations after Earl & Gilmore's steam saw. The mills' story is the township's first industry, and it ends, in the carriers reached, not with a closing but with the directories' silence.