The Old-Settlers' Stock: Merrifield's Articles, Brunner's 137 Essays, and the Certificates

1859–1983 · the collected stock, collector by collector

The first collector — the town's first publisher: Mishawaka's old-settlers' stock was first collected in print by a man who had printed the town's first newspaper. George Merrifield, publisher of the town's first paper, published in 1859 — in the Enterprise, under Archibald Beal — a nine-article series, "Mishawaka: Its Early History and Present Condition": the town's first history, written within living memory of the founding by a man who had been part of it, and the seed collection from which every later Mishawaka telling descends. The newspapers record of this history carries the series at that standing; what belongs here is its classification — it is a reminiscence stock, gathered from the settlers themselves while the settlement was twenty-six years old, and it is the earliest layer of the city's collected memory.

The great collector — Vincent Brunner: The stock's named great collector is the Swiss immigrant the Culture record profiles as the city's self-appointed historian. Vincent Brunner — born in Switzerland in 1862, brought to Mishawaka at five, a businessman — "spent decades gathering stories and clippings" about the city's history up to its centennial celebration in 1932, in the City of Mishawaka's own published summary of Peter J. De Kever's commissioned history, and wrote 137 essays toward a history he called Mishawaka, Its Rise and Progress. The manuscript was never published. Its one sentence that print carries whole is its doctrine, and it stands as the epigraph of the city's commissioned history: "We should always bear in mind that Mishawaka should be a distinct and separate community with its own inspiration." The city's summary states the manuscript's consequence in one line: "Though Brunner's manuscript was never published, his research laid the foundation for subsequent efforts to tell the story of Mishawaka" — which is the precise sense in which the modern commissioned history, De Kever's Mishawaka: A History, stands on Brunner's stock: the essays are the old-settlers' collection of this city, gathered by a named collector over decades, and the whole of the city's later memory-work cites them as its foundation.

What cannot be printed, and why this entry is a gap as well as a record: The best stories of Brunner's stock cannot be printed at telling size, because the collection itself was not reached: no copy of the 137 essays — no catalogue entry, no digitized text, no quoted essay beyond the doctrine sentence — stands in any record this section could reach in November 2026, and a folklore file does not retell stories it has not read. The gap is named with its settling sources: the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library's Local & Family History holdings and the Mishawaka Historical Museum (121 South Main Street, whose president and curator is the commissioned historian himself) are the two custodies a manuscript of Brunner's would rest in, and an accession-level check of both is the settling pass. What stands until that pass is the collection's frame, complete: collector, title, count, span (to the 1932 centennial), its unpublished state, its one quoted sentence, and its documented role as the foundation of the city's commissioned history.

The institution that replaced the collection — the pioneer certificates: The old-settlers' association in its classic form — a named society with meetings and a published proceedings — stands in no source reached for this city. Its documented Mishawaka form is later and civic: at the sesquicentennial's Founder's Day, 16 July 1983, the local genealogical society presented pioneer certificates to eighty Mishawakans descended from settlers present before 1883 — the old-settlers' roll kept as a descent register, certified family by family, in the city's 150th year. Between Merrifield's articles of 1859 and the certificates of 1983, the stock's keeping passed from a publisher, to a lone collector with an unpublished book, to a society certifying descent; the tales themselves, at telling size, wait on the manuscript named above.

Sources:

1. City of Mishawaka, "Mishawaka: A History by Peter J. De Kever" and "History" (mishawaka.in.gov) — Brunner born 1862, immigrated at five; the decades of gathering stories and clippings to the 1932 centennial; the 137 essays comprising Mishawaka, Its Rise and Progress; the manuscript unpublished; its foundation role; the doctrine sentence, quoted as the commissioned history's epigraph.
2. This history, Culture section — Brunner's life and manuscript at the memory-keepers' size, from De Kever's commissioned history.
3. This history, newspapers record — Merrifield's nine-article series "Mishawaka: Its Early History and Present Condition," Mishawaka Enterprise, 1859, under Beal; Merrifield as the town's first publisher turned its first historian.
4. This history, Culture and Events sections — the sesquicentennial Founder's Day of 16 July 1983 and the genealogical society's pioneer certificates to eighty descendants of pre-1883 settlers.
5. Named as settling sources for the manuscript's text, not reached: the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library's Local & Family History accession records and the Mishawaka Historical Museum's holdings.