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Banked grocer benches and the November 2026 storefront census, stated as a chain test
Lakeville never had a supermarket, and the chain test prints that plainly: the grocery record runs from general stores to a dollar store without ever passing through a supermarket's doors. The directory-age benches carry grocers inside general stores — Clark W. S., grocer, in 1880–81; Smith Thomas B., grocer, among four general stores in 1916–17 — and no chain name, no A&P, no Kroger, no independent supermarket stands in any edition read or in the present-day census. The one national chain on the ground is Dollar General, 311 North Michigan Street, carried in the banked census at listing strength as a discount and general store — chain presence at honest size, exactly as the checklist prescribes, and not inflated into a grocery. The boundary pointer is South Bend's: the supermarket trade of the county, the Martin's Super Markets line among it, belongs to the county seat's file, and Lakeville's shoppers have always driven to it. The test closes as a documented negative with the benches shown.