The furniture trade, whole — from the wholesale cluster of 1868 to the dealers

1867 – 1921

How it was missed: a trade carried as colour and as roster.

The wholesale cluster: Howard's roll gives the trade its corporation first: the Mishawaka Furniture Company, organized October 10, 1867, capital sixty thousand dollars, incorporators Adoniram B. Judson, Robert Montgomery, Lewis T. Booth and De Witt C. Eggleston. The 1868 county directory shows what the corporation's generation looked like on the ground — three wholesale furniture manufactories in a town of three thousand: Bless, Kena & Co., on the north side of the river; Judson, Montgomery & Co., at Main and Water, "wholesale manufacturers of and dealers in Black Walnut & Poplar bedsteads, bureaus, extension tables"; and Martin H. B. & L. W., making black walnut and maple bedsteads and wood and cane seat chairs. Extension tables are enough of a trade to hold their own heading in the book. Howard adds the trade's specialist: the Andrews School and Church Furniture Company, incorporated December 20, 1870, capital fifty thousand dollars — William W. Ferris, S. E. White, J. Q. C. Vandenbosch, William N. Dunn, James Welliver, Henry G. Niles and Alfred H. Andrews — school and church furniture being the Mishawaka works' niche inside the trade. Joe Valley Furniture Company; Johnson's 1902–03 directory carries Roper still — "ROPER FURNITURE CO, THE, 216 W [2d]" — beside a retail house, Ellis & Sandilands, furniture, 122 N. Main. The 1921 classified's Furniture Dealers heading is retail: the wholesale manufacture has left the book, its end undated in anything reached, and the trade's arc stands as the directories give it — wholesale cluster, specialist corporation, two-company narrowing, retail remainder.

The doubling test, run and answered: in the classic Midwestern pattern — and in South Bend's gap pass, where the undertakers grow out of the furniture and coffin trade — the furniture dealer and the undertaker are the same man, the cabinetmaker burying the town he furnished. In Mishawaka's directories the pattern does not repeat: the town's first undertaker of record, Eugene A. Feiten in 1902, stands under his own name and trade at 205 N. The test is printed because it was run: on this ground the two trades stood separate, at directory strength, and the undertakers' entry below is written on that footing.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (1907), Mishawaka chapter, "Business Enterprises" — the Mishawaka Furniture Company incorporation of 1867 and the Andrews School and Church Furniture Company incorporation of 1870, with capitals and incorporators. Read in the ldsgenealogy transcription.
2. Business Directory of St. Joseph County (1868), the Mishawaka list — headings Furniture Manufactories and Extension Tables: Bless, Kena & Co.; Judson, Montgomery & Co.; Martin H. B. & L. W., with the products as quoted.
3. Directory of Indiana Manufacturers and Buyers' Guide (1889) — the Roper and St.
4. Johnson's Business & Professional Directory (1902–03), the Mishawaka Business Directory — Roper Furniture Co.; Ellis & Sandilands, furniture; Feiten Eugene A., undertaker, in the same department.
5. Polk's Mishawaka City Directory (1921), classified directory, heading Furniture Dealers.