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1857–1859 and after
The record opens backwards. Howard's account of the plat is the only full one reached, and it carries an oddity this build prints rather than smooths: "The original plat of the town, consisting of Lots A. B. C. D. E. & F., on the west side of the Michigan road, is first shown on record as lying north of and adjoining Coquillard's addition to the town; which addition was platted August 18, 1857, by Alexis T., Alexis and Frances C. Coquillard. The original plat was itself afterwards placed on record December 23, 1859; but again in connection with the Coquillard addition." The Coquillards were the son, the nephew and the widow of the elder Alexis Coquillard, one of the founders of South Bend. So the town's paper begins with an addition of 1857 and an original recorded two years later, and no proprietor or surveyor for the original Lots A–F plat is named by Howard or by any other carrier reached — the recorded plat itself, in the County Recorder's plat books, is the settler, and the want is banked as a named gap. The town's own plan narrative adds, at narrative strength, that Alex Coquillard owned land and a sawmill here and "helped form the village," and that Michael Hupp platted much of Lakeville on the east side, including Michigan and Main streets. Additions were afterwards platted by John Henderson, Michael Hupp, Stephen A. Ulery and Sarah E. Rush (Howard, no dates given), and a second set of additions came with the plank-road years told in the road article below. The 1875 county atlas prints a plat of Lakeville at its page 40 and locates the town, in its history text, on sections 34 and 35, Range 2 East, "laid out previous to 1859" — the year in the atlas's surviving text is degraded at one character and is printed in this build's register as the ambiguity it is.