The chronological ladder — Mishawaka's firms, oldest first

1831 – 2012 · entry size, in date order

The first trading house, settled as far as the record settles it: no source in the county record — not Chapman (1880), not the 1875 Atlas, not Howard (1907), not De Kever's city history, not Ward Baker's 1959 study — names a first storekeeper for this ground. What the record does give is a store building before it gives a storekeeper: Chapman records that Mishawaka's Methodists, organized in 1835, worshipped at first in an empty store building, which the Presbyterians also used. A trading house stood in the iron-works village by 1835; whose it was, the record reached does not say, and no name is printed for it. The first general-store houses the record names by name are the two of the 1868 county directory — A. B. Judson & Son and Clark & Whitson, both at Main and Second — and the ladder below opens with the firms the record can date, in their order.

1831–32 — Joseph Pemberton's lathe. A settler's lathe turning chairs and bedposts near the rapids, counted by historian Janice Bridges, in De Kever's account, as the first manufacturing in the area — before the town, before the furnace.

1833 — the St. Joseph Iron Works. Alanson M. Hurd, sole proprietor until December 1834, then the St. Joseph Iron Company with John Orr, John Deming and J. E. Hollister, Hurd president; the blast furnace, Benjamin Lucas founder, in operation in 1834, casting stoves, kettles, plows and mill-gearings. The town's first firm is also its founding firm, and its course is the Story of Mishawaka section's and the iron record's, pointed to here.

1834 — Elias Smith's sawmill, and the town's first houses of entertainment. The Atlas: "Elias Smith built a new sawmill, and the people were supplied with lumber." The same year Orlando Hurd opened the Mishawaka Hotel (the first-forms article below), and a tavern — Finch's in the Atlas, Earl's in the church record — was standing in time to host the first worship.

1835 — the first flouring mill. Howard names its builder Francis P. Taylor; the Atlas names Asa Taylor. Both are printed in the first-forms article; the mill itself is not in dispute.

1836 — the St. Joseph's County Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Chartered 8 February 1836, the first insurance company of the county on Howard's account, its corporators joining Mishawaka's Hurds, Elias Smith and Francis P. Taylor with South Bend's founders in one list — a county firm, printed here at county size.

1838 — the Mishawaka Iron and Manufacturing Company. Capital $100,000; incorporators John N. Sherman, Orlando Hurd, George W. R. Fowler, Charles W. Pomery and Alonzo Delano, on the act approved 17 February 1838 — the union day itself.

1840s — the Bement axe works. Harrison Bement's family's edge-tool works, running by the 1840s on the axe-history record the Perkins entry in the Businesses section carries; the works Palmer C. Perkins would buy a generation later.

1853 — John Wagner's brewery. The first brewery structures at what is now 100 Center Street; the house that became Kamm & Schellinger, carried whole in the Businesses section.

1854 — the Bank of Mishawaka. Organized, and never opened; it survives as printed proof notes. The Businesses section carries it whole.

1864 — Albert Cass's Ripple Mills. Cass sold his interest in a wagon and carriage company in 1864 and built a large flour mill, Ripple Mills, on the race in what is now downtown, on the National Register nomination for his house.

1867 — the Mishawaka Hydraulic Company and the Mishawaka Furniture Company. The Hydraulic Company, organized 28 June 1867, capital $50,000, to keep the dam and races and sell the water power — the utility every race-side firm depended on. The Furniture Company, organized 10 October 1867, capital $60,000, incorporators Adoniram B. Judson, Robert Montgomery, Lewis T. Booth and De Witt C. Eggleston; the business-gaps file carries the furniture trade whole.

1868 — the Judson house, at full directory size. A. B. Judson & Son: general storekeepers, boot and shoe dealers, hat and cap dealers, leather dealers — and bankers, the town's first operating bankers of record; A. B. Judson & Co., proprietors of the Mishawaka Flouring Mill at the foot of Mill Street. Clark & Whitson, general store at Main and Second in the same book, are the town's bankers by 1902. Both stands are the business-gaps file's, pointed to here.

1869 — Perkins's windmill patent, and the South Bend Woolen Company's Mishawaka parentage. Palmer C. Perkins's patent No. 93,472 of 10 August 1869, on the Bement ground; the joint-stock Perkins Wind Mill and Ax Company followed in 1873. The same year dates the South Bend Woolen Company's mill across the river, organized by Mishawaka men — a boundary line, carried in the gaps file, not a Mishawaka firm.

1870 — the Andrews School and Church Furniture Company (incorporated 20 December 1870, capital $50,000), the trade's specialist house; and Adolph Kamm and Clemens Dick's purchase of Wagner's brewery, the Kamm & Schellinger line's start.

1874 — the Mishawaka Woolen Manufacturing Company, incorporated on Howard's roll: the woolen house that became Ball Band, held whole in its own file and pointed to here.

1878 — Dodge Manufacturing. Wallace H. Dodge's Magic Jack company, incorporated 1880, the pulley of 1882, and the longest succession in the Businesses section — Reliance, Rockwell, Baldor, ABB, RBC Bearings' Dodge Industrial — carried whole there.

1880–82 — the paper and pulp incorporations. Mishawaka Wood Pulp Company, 4 March 1880; Mishawaka Paper Company, 21 April 1881; A. Gaylor Pulp Company, 24 February 1882 — the cluster's dated founding, in the gaps file.

1885 — the Power and Transmission Publishing Company (27 November 1885; Wallace H. Dodge, Edward A. Jernegan, Alexander L. Thorp), publisher of Rope Transmission Power — Dodge's publishing arm, and the ancestor of the Dodge Idea in the media article below.

1889 — the directory snapshot.

1900–01 — the First National Bank (OCC charter No. 5167), the town's first chartered bank to open, carried whole in the Businesses section; 1902 — Major Bros, meats, the packing house's first directory state, whole in the gaps file; 1903 — Twin Branch, first power 16 December 1903, whole in the Businesses section.

1920 — the West End State Bank, the head of the Valley American line to PNC, whole in the Businesses section; 1921 — the six-bank roster and the building-and-loan layer, whole in the gaps file; 1926 — American Foundry Equipment's consolidation at Mishawaka, the Wheelabrator line, whole in the Businesses section; 1928 — West End Bakery, founded by the Fobe family at 414 West Seventh Street, in a building whose first tenant was a chain — see the chain article below.

1948 — Cressy, founded as a local residential real-estate company by George Cressy Sr. and Ed Everett Jr., on the company's own anniversary account; its modern form stands in the modern-founding article. 1952 — WSBT-TV signs on (21 December 1952), a South Bend license produced from Mishawaka from 2008 — the media article below. 1966 — the McKinley Avenue Kmart opens, the chain article below.

2002 — Better World Books is founded, headquartered in Mishawaka; 2008 — the Schurz broadcast building opens at 1301 East Douglas Road, and Mishawaka becomes the seat of the valley's largest newsroom; 2012 — Lighthouse Autism Center opens in Mishawaka. The last three stands are carried at their size in the articles below.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (1907), Mishawaka chapter, "Business Enterprises" — the Iron Works and its 1838 successor company, the 1836 insurance charter, Orlando Hurd's hotel of 1834, Taylor's flouring mill of the following year, the Hydraulic and Furniture companies of 1867, and the paper incorporations, read first-hand in the ldsgenealogy transcription.
2. Higgins, Belden & Co., An Illustrated Historical Atlas of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1875), the Mishawaka history — Benjamin Lucas the founder and the 1834 furnace, Elias Smith's sawmill, Asa Taylor's flouring mill of 1835, the tavern kept by Mr. Finch, and the firsts list, read first-hand.
3. Chas. C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880) — the Methodists of 1835 worshipping in an empty store building, the earliest store evidence in the record.
4. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History (city-commissioned) — Pemberton's lathe as the first manufacturing, the Iron Company of December 1834, and the 1840s commercial district at Main and Second, read first-hand.
5. Ward N. Baker, "Mishawaka on the Eve of Conflict," Indiana Magazine of History (March 1959) — the late-1850s business section at Main and Second and its merchants' stores.
6. National Register of Historic Places, Merrifield-Cass House nomination (1983) — Albert Cass's 1864 sale of his wagon-company interest and his Ripple Mills flour mill on the race.
7. The businesses and business-gaps files of this build — the dated stands for Dodge, Perkins, the brewery, the banks, the paper cluster, Twin Branch, Wheelabrator, Major Bros, the Judson and Clark & Whitson houses, each carried whole in its own entry and pointed to, not retold, here.