Alanson M. Hurd — the proprietor the town grew on

the townsite purchase, 1 January 1833 · the iron company formed December 1834

The founding act, at anchor size: Mishawaka's first founder is carried whole in the Story of Mishawaka section and the Land record, and stands here at the size this class gives its first member. Alanson M. Hurd, a Detroit businessman, heard of the bog-iron deposits south of the St. Joseph River, sent William Earl to scout them in the summer of 1832, came himself, and chose the rapids for the water power. On 1 January 1833 he bought the 640-acre School Section 16 at $1.25 an acre — $800 in all — built Indiana's first successful iron blast furnace on the south bank, and in the summer of 1833 platted the Village of St. Joseph Iron Works on forty square blocks around it. He was sole proprietor until December 1834, when he formed the St. Joseph Iron Company with John Orr, John Deming, and J. E. Hollister, himself as first president; the legislature chartered the company on 22 January 1835.

The founder's exit, and the record's shape: The commissioned city history states the shape of his exit in one clause: Hurd "sold most of the land he had bought to developers eager to invest in a growing village." At what prices, over what years, and for what total, the published record does not say — the Wealth section prints the two dated retail sales the deed record gives and names the county deed books as the settling source, and no ledger of Hurd's return exists in any source reached. The town itself is his monument: the furnace, the plat, and the water power every later fortune in this section used.

Sources:

1. Great Fortunes — "Alanson M. Hurd" (Part One) — the 1832 scouting and the 1 January 1833 purchase of Section 16 at $1.25 an acre; the sole proprietorship to December 1834; the St. Joseph Iron Company formed with Orr, Deming, and Hollister, Hurd as first president; the charter of 22 January 1835; the commissioned history's one-clause exit; the two dated deed sales of 1837.
2. The Story of Mishawaka and the-land record of this build — the founding course whole, cross-referenced.