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Town of Lakeville 2011 Comprehensive Plan, history chapter (Geyer's narrative), read first-hand
The plan's history chapter, Jeanne Geyer's historic narrative as the plan prints it, states: "Adam Shidler owned the Black Bear Tavern, where businessmen and their wives often traveled from South Bend for dances and meetings" — a named house, a named keeper, and a described trade: not a stage stop only, but a destination, drawing South Bend society down the Michigan Road for its dances. The plan prints the house undated; it belongs by its texture to the coaching-era village, and it is entered here at the plan's strength with that limit stated, not back-dated by inference. Set beside Earl's, the town's first-era lodging record is two houses: Earl's, the 1836 stand where the township's first election was held and the post office tradition begins, and Shidler's Black Bear, the social house of the same road. The rate-war limb of this row prints its negative with it: no competing rate, rate war or undercutting between the town's houses, or between a Lakeville house and a South Bend or North Liberty house, stands in any carrier reached — the coaching trade's prices for this village are unrecorded in the reached record, and the negative is stated at that strength.