The second rank — Howard's incorporation roll and the directories' small headings

1838 – 1921; the sweep's method, and its list

The method of this entry: what remains of the sweep is the list itself. Two named sources were worked the way South Bend's gap pass worked Howard and Farr: Timothy Howard's Mishawaka chapter, whose "Business Enterprises" section is an incorporation roll — company by company, with dates, capitals, and incorporators, from the town's first corporations to 1903 — and the classified headings of the directories, worked heading by heading, where a single firm under a heading is a catch and not a rounding error. The directories worked are printed in this section's headnote and in the entries; the roll below takes only what those sources give, at list size, because a completeness sweep that printed only the firms with stories would miss the point of sweeping.

Howard's roll, the firms no other entry carries: the Mishawaka Iron and Manufacturing Company, organized under an act approved February 17, 1838, capital one hundred thousand dollars — John N. Sherman, Orlando Hurd, George W. R. Fowler, Charles W. Pomery and Alonzo Delano — the town's second corporation, after the Iron Works itself; and the Iron Works' own continuation, which Howard gives in a line the tractors file's plow story rests on: under the name of the St. Joseph Manufacturing Company, making plows and farming implements, "it continues to this day." The Mishawaka Hydraulic Company, organized June 28, 1867, capital fifty thousand dollars — the water-power company, its incorporators a roll of the race's manufacturers, George Milburn, Palmer C. Perkins, Adoniram B. Judson, Adolphus Eberhart and Henry G. Niles as trustee for the St. Joseph Iron Company among them — whose dam and races the industrial file treats as works; the company as a company stands here. The Hollow Axle Manufacturing Company, March 4, 1871, twenty thousand dollars — George Milburn, William A. Lewis, William Moffitt. The Bostwick Refrigerator Company, August 10, 1873, twenty thousand dollars — Joseph Bostwick, Thomas A. Bless, Christian Bless and William Bostwick — refrigerators and house-furnishing goods, the Bless name carrying over from the 1868 furniture cluster. The St. Joseph Milling Company, organized July 2, 1883, sixteen thousand dollars — Adolph Kamm, Simon Yenn, John J. Schindler and Caspar Kuhn — operating the mill George Kuhn and his partners had built in 1861; Johnson's 1902–03 book still lists St. Joseph Mills, on E. Joseph. And the utility corporations, at incorporation size, their works' courses belonging to the city's utility record: the Mishawaka Water Works Company, September 9, 1890, twenty thousand dollars, Wallace H. Dodge, Henry G. Niles and John J. Schindler, organized to build the town its waterworks and deed them over on the rent; the Dodge Electric Light and Power Company, November 29, 1890, twenty-five thousand dollars; and the Mishawaka Public Utility Company, April 1, 1903, ten thousand dollars, whose twenty-six incorporators — Beigers, Eberharts, Mix, Schellinger, Kamm, Niles, Herzog, Ganser and their neighbors — read as the town's business class incorporating itself to carry the utilities.

A conflict in the roll, printed whole: Howard's text, as the transcription carries it, incorporates the Mishawaka Pump Company twice — February 27, 1883, capital ten thousand dollars, James Dougherty, John H. Uline and George Dougherty; and April 1, 1887, capital nine thousand dollars, William Miller, J. W. Vanden Bosch and W. L. Kimball.

The wagon company of 1876, and a name that will not settle: Howard incorporates a Mishawaka Wagon Company on January 18, 1876, capital fifty thousand dollars — Robert Montgomery, De Witt C. Eggleston and Charles E. Sillsbee — three years after Milburn's departure emptied the town's great wagon works, a successor venture in the same trade on the same ground. Whether the South Bend-named company kept a Mishawaka works, whether the directories misfiled it twice running, or whether the 1876 Mishawaka company's product went out under a neighbor city's name, nothing reached settles; the listings stand as printed in both books, and the question stands with them.

The small headings, at name size: under Bed Manufacturers in 1921, one firm — the Premier Bed Co., at Beiger and the N.Y.C.R.R. Under Last Manufacturers, one firm — the Clark G. C. Metal Last Co., 1107–11 N. Main, making metal lasts for the shoe trade the woolen and rubber works anchored. Under Novelty Manufacturers, one firm — the School Loom & Novelty Co., 1202 W. 7th. Under Rubber Goods in 1921, the Hoosier Rubber Co., 308 N. West, a dealer or small maker the heading does not distinguish. Under Bottlers, beside the brewery, the Mishawaka Bottling Works, 505 Olive. The bakers of 1921: the Kuss Baking Co., 115–121 W. 1st — a company-scale bakery — with Block August, 119 N. Mishawaka Ave.; the Federal System Bakery, 103 Lincoln Way W.; and Lindzy Bert, 117 E. Mishawaka Ave. The cigar manufacturers: Meatz & Frostbauer, 124 Lincoln Way W., with a display advertisement, and Jehse Charles H., 301 N. Merrifield Ave. — a two-factory cigar trade, against the eighteen-to-twenty makers Howard counts across the river. Under Essential Oils in 1921 stands the trade the mint file knows from the fields: the A. M. Todd Co. of Kalamazoo, at 107 W. 1st — the peppermint-oil buyer's Mishawaka office, the Kalamazoo house's storefront in the district whose oil, on the exports file's record, moved through Todd's hands; the oil's own course stands in the farms and exports files, and the office stands here. From 1868: the Holcomb & Bro. vinegar factory on the Race, a single-firm heading; and a second ax factory, Nottage & Ball, on the north Race, beside Perkins P. C. on Bridge — the axe trade two houses deep before the windmill took the Perkins name. From 1889: the Mishawaka Factory Co., which no record reached identifies, printed as it stands. One two-state arc closes the list: Rosenstein S. & Sons, junk dealers at 212 N. Mill in 1921, stand in the 1949 book under Rubber Goods — Wholesale at 413 N. Cedar — the junk house grown into the rubber trade's wholesale rank, the only small firm in the sweep whose two directory states describe a rise. Magrames Wm. & Co., the candy kitchen at 109 Lincoln Way W. under three 1921 headings — cigars and tobacco, confectioners, ice cream parlors — is pointed to the bars and wineries files, where its Prohibition-era course stands; it is not retold here.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (1907), Mishawaka chapter, "Business Enterprises" — the incorporation roll as printed above. Read in the ldsgenealogy transcription; the transcription is machine-generated, its two-column pages interleave in places, and the pump-company doubling may be the transcription's as readily as the book's — the conflict is printed at that strength.
2. Business Directory of St. Joseph County (1868); Johnson's Business & Professional Directory (1902–03); Polk's Mishawaka City Directory (1921), classified directory — the small headings as printed above.
3. Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka City Directory (1949), Mishawaka classified, heading Rubber Goods — Wholesale — Rosenstein S. & Sons, 413 N. Cedar.
4. Exports and farms files of this build — the Todd company's place in the mint-oil trade, cross-referenced.