The people: Beigers, Eberharts, and Saunders

1844 – 1933

Jacob and Martin Beiger: Jacob Beiger, a native German who came to America in 1844 bringing his family, bought the mill with his son in 1867; his dates were not settled in the record reached, and the gap is named rather than filled. Martin Valentine Beiger — born 3 February 1847 in St. Joseph County, a private of Company H, 138th Indiana Volunteers in 1864, a woolen manufacturer from twenty-one — was the company's president in its reorganized form, the co-inventor of the boot that made it, and by 1900, in the Beiger Mansion's account, Mishawaka's first millionaire. In December 1875 he married Susie Higgins, a local jeweler's daughter. The Beigers had no children. Their civic gifts are documented at the mansion account's strength: they founded Mishawaka's East United Methodist Church, supported the First United Methodist Church, and established Beiger School. Martin died on 26 September 1903 — an infection after an operation for appendicitis, aged fifty-six — before the house they were building was finished.

The mansion and Susie's bequest: The house at 317 Lincolnway East was begun in 1903: four and a half stories and 21,790 square feet, the largest home in Mishawaka, its grounds planned by the landscape architect Jens Jensen, with a $25,000 Aeolian organ among its fittings. It was completed in 1908; Susie Beiger lived in it from 1909 until her death in 1927, aged sixty-seven, and willed it as a home for the elderly. The Beiger Home for the Elderly opened on 1 February 1930, housed over one hundred women across its life, and operated until 1967; her estate stood at $1.55 million, of which $210,000 was left for the home's maintenance. The mansion stands today as an inn and event venue — its own site live in November 2026 — and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the works' one surviving house, standing a short walk from the ground where no works building survives.

Adolphus Eberhart: Adolphus Eberhart was born 11 February 1824 at Clyde, in Wayne County, New York, and came to St. Joseph County at twelve, in 1836. He was a wagon- and carriage-maker in partnership with Albert Cass; in 1864 he built with John Miles a flouring mill among the largest in the West, which he managed until 1887 while retaining a one-third interest. Goodspeed's Memoirs credit him as the organizer of the 1886 reorganization and co-inventor of the boot, and fix his transaction: he sold a half interest in the patent to the company for $100,000, and took the superintendent's chair in the reorganized company. He was, at sixty-two, the senior industrialist of the partnership — the established mill man whose organizing hand turned a family woolen mill into a capitalized company — and the record's treatment of him as a supporting figure to the Beigers reverses the documentary weight of 1886.

The two F. G. Eberharts, printed honestly: The 1886 roster's vice-president, "F. G. Eberhart," conceals a generational overlap that the genealogical record — the family sheet Descendants of George Frederick Eberhart — separates into two men, and the separation is printed so the build does not merge them. Adolphus's brother, F. G. Eberhart Jr. (born 15 March 1835 in Yates County, New York; died 11 March 1909 in Penn Township), fits the 1886 vice-presidency by age and place. Adolphus's son, Frederick George Eberhart (born 1 April 1864 at Mishawaka; died 23 March 1933; his biography stands in the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 30, p. 451), is the Eberhart of the rubber era: the 1910 census records him at forty-six as a manufacturer with the Rubber & Woolen Company, and the 1920 census as a factory vice-president. A third of the family, George F. Eberhart (born 8 November 1868 in Penn Township), traveled four years as a salesman for the Mishawaka Woolen Company, in Howard's 1907 county history. Fred Eberhart's documented civic gift closes the family's record: the land for Mishawaka's Carnegie library was donated by Fred Eberhart — the South Bend News Times' 2025 account says a plot donated by the Eberhart family on Hill Street, a block from the plant — the library built with a $30,000 Carnegie grant to A. F. Wickes's design, opened 5 May 1916 beside the works to serve working families, enlarged by the Works Progress Administration in 1937, listed on the National Register in 1998, and standing today at 122 North Hill as a restaurant and event center. A library for the plant's families, on the plant family's land, is the Eberharts' surviving building, as the mansion is the Beigers'.

Saunders: Emmett A. Saunders belongs in this company, though he was neither founder nor family: the Goodyear Metallic superintendent who resigned in 1897 to build the rubber mill, and who rose to president and "chief and most active executive" of the company — the findings of Bankers Trust Co. v. Higgins fix his place and his death, on 26 January 1933 at eighty-four, a resident part-time of South Bend. Between the Beigers' wool and the Eberharts' organization, Saunders is the third founder the plant actually had: the man who made it a rubber company, and so made everything after 1898 possible.

Sources:

1. Goodspeed Brothers, Pictorial and Biographical Memoirs (1893) — Jacob Beiger's 1844 immigration, Martin's birth, service, marriage-age career, and the M. V. Beiger & Co. firm; Adolphus Eberhart's birth, migration, wagon and flouring-mill course, the 1886 organization, and the $100,000 patent half-interest.
2. Beiger Mansion, published account — Martin V. Beiger as Mishawaka's first millionaire by 1900, the marriage to Susie Higgins in December 1875, the churches and Beiger School, the mansion's size, grounds, organ, and dates, Susie Beiger's death in 1927 and the Beiger Home for the Elderly (opened 1 February 1930, over 100 women, operated to 1967), and the estate figures.
3. Descendants of George Frederick Eberhart (family genealogical sheet, RootsWeb) — the two Frederick George Eberharts separated, with their dates; National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 30, p. 451 — the younger Frederick George Eberhart; United States census returns of 1910 and 1920 as the sheet reports them.
4. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County (1907) — George F. Eberhart's four years traveling for the company.
5. South Bend News Times, "Pages in Transit" (9 April 2025), and the National Register record for the Old Mishawaka Carnegie Library (NRHP 98001048) — the Eberhart land donation, the $30,000 Carnegie grant, A. F. Wickes architect, construction from September 1915, opening 5 May 1916, the 1937 WPA addition, listing in 1998, and the building's present use at 122 North Hill.
6. Bankers Trust Co. v. Higgins, 65 F. Supp. 836 (S.D.N.Y. 1946) — Saunders's presidency and chief-executive standing and his death on 26 January 1933.