Ice, coal, and the carrying trades

1889 – 1949

How they were missed:The directories carry them in full, and their shape is the shape of the town's heating and hauling, era by era.

Ice:The 1868 directory has no ice heading, and no ice dealer stands in Johnson's 1902–03 Mishawaka list as read; the trade surfaces as a heading in 1921, under Ice Manufacturers and Dealers, with exactly one firm: the Schroeder Coal & Ice Co., at 111 W. Broadway — ice by then a coal company's second line, manufactured or harvested the directory does not say. By 1949 the heading Ice — Dealers carries one name, Etherington Thos. P., 221 W. 11th, and a Williams Coal, Ice company still wears the trade in its name; the ice-cream manufacturers of the same book — the Borden Co.'s Furnas Ice Cream division, at 825–831 S. Main as read, and Swift & Company at 611 S. 3d — are the trade's industrial remainder, national houses on Mishawaka ground. The harvest itself — which pond or river reach the town's ice came off, and in whose icehouses it was stored — is in none of the records reached, and is named in the closing article rather than imagined.

Coal: Johnson's 1902–03 list gives the trade two houses: Rankert & Eggleston, coal and wood, and Wahl William E., coal, at 112 S. Main. The 1921 book gives it four headings and a small crowd: under Coal, Coke and Wood stand the City Coal Yard, 814 W. 4th; the Grange Elevator Co., 405 Union — the farmers' elevator selling coal beside its feed, which stands under Feed in the same book with Malaise Eugene, 817 W. 6th, and Wm. E. Wech as read, at 1112 N. Main; Jaquith Roy, 226 N. Main; Kronenwitter D. L., 315 Union; Kuhn A. E., 121 E. Mishawaka Ave.; the Niles Coal Co., 305 N. West; the North Side Coal & Transfer Co., 506 N. Main — a coal house that is also a carrying house, the two trades in one name; and the Schroeder Coal & Ice Co. again. The display headings add Herzog & Anderson, 124 S. Main and at Main and the N.Y.C.R.R., and the Rose Schuyler Coal Co., 424 S. Spring, which holds the retail, wholesale, coke, fuel, and charcoal lines nearly alone. One boundary care: the coal advertisement that shouts loudest in the book — "Our coal makes warm friends," Knoblock & Martin — gives a Washington Avenue address in South Bend; it is a South Bend house advertising in Mishawaka's directory and is not counted here. By 1949 the trade has thinned to the Cash Coal Co., a City Coal Yard at a 308 address the scan does not carry further, and the Williams coal-and-ice name — the directory's poor scan allows no fuller roster, and none is invented.

The carrying trades: under Hauling in 1921 stands the Clearys Bros. Transfer Co., 225 N. Main, with its own display line; the North Side Coal & Transfer doubles as above; and the Finch Auto Livery's motor headings, carried in the undertakers' entry, are the carrying trade's passenger arm. The draymen of the horse era stand in the livery entry below. What the three headings together show is a trade in mid-passage — coal by the yard, ice by the coal company, freight by a transfer firm with a telephone — the week-to-week economy the flagship story never had a paragraph for.

Sources:

1. Johnson's Business & Professional Directory (1902–03), the Mishawaka Business Directory — Rankert & Eggleston; Wahl William E.
2. Polk's Mishawaka City Directory (1921), classified directory — headings Ice Manufacturers and Dealers; Coal, Coke and Wood; Coal Dealers; Coal — Retail; Coal — Wholesale; Coke; Fuel; Charcoal; Feed; Hauling; and the Knoblock & Martin display advertisement, boundary-printed.
3. Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka City Directory (1949), Mishawaka classified — headings Ice — Dealers; Ice Cream Manufacturers; and the coal names as read from a poor scan.
4. Directory of Indiana Manufacturers and Buyers' Guide (1889) — Silas R.