Jacob and Martin Beiger, and Adolphus Eberhart — the woolen founding, in three hands

the mill bought 1867 · incorporated 31 January 1874 · reorganized 1886

The purchase: In 1867 Jacob Beiger and his son Martin V. Beiger bought the woolen mill at the dam. Jacob was a German immigrant who had come to America in 1844; Martin, born in St. Joseph County on 3 February 1847, had served as a private in Company H of the 138th Indiana Volunteer Infantry in 1864 and come home to the wool trade, becoming at twenty-one a member of the firm of M. V. Beiger & Co. The price of the mill and the seller's name are not carried in the record reached, and neither is supplied. On 31 January 1874 the business was incorporated as the Mishawaka Woolen Manufacturing Company, with a capital of $25,000; Timothy Howard's county history names the incorporators: George Hartstein, Jacob Beiger, Martin V. Beiger, D. A. Dixon, and George E. Wells. The starting workforce is carried two ways and both are printed: the company's published history gives twenty-five persons making flannels and yarn; the Beiger Mansion's account of the founders states that the Beigers began with "just 3 employees."

The reorganization of 1886 — Eberhart's hand: The company's transformation was a second founding, and its organizer was not a Beiger. Adolphus Eberhart — born 11 February 1824 at Clyde, New York, in St. Joseph County from the age of twelve, a wagon- and carriage-maker turned flouring-mill builder, and George Milburn's old partner in the wagon works — was, in Goodspeed's 1893 biography of him, the man who "organized the Mishawaka Woolen Manufacturing Company" in 1886 with capital stock of $200,000, eight times the 1874 capital. The occasion was the all-knit wool boot that he and Martin Beiger invented together that year — the Inventors section prints the patent record; this section prints the partnership. Eberhart sold a half interest in the boot patent to the company for $100,000, the single largest documented transaction of the company's woolen era. The reorganized company's officer roster, as Goodspeed prints it, divides the house as the founding had: M. V. Beiger, president; F. G. Eberhart, vice-president; J. C. Eberhart, secretary; A. Eberhart, superintendent; Marvin Campbell, treasurer — with Clement Studebaker and J. M. Studebaker of South Bend among the directors, and in November 1887 a half interest in the company itself sold to the Studebaker brothers. By about 1893 the company employed 140 to 150 persons and did $200,000 of annual business.

The two F. G. Eberharts, printed honestly: The roster's vice-president conceals a generational overlap the Ball Band section separates and this section repeats: Adolphus's brother, F. G. Eberhart Jr. (1835–1909), fits the 1886 vice-presidency by age and place, while Adolphus's son, Frederick George Eberhart (1864–1933), is the Eberhart of the rubber era — a manufacturer with the Rubber & Woolen Company in the 1910 census — whose civic gifts close this section's founder-to-institution course in the entry's last paragraph. Martin Beiger died on 26 September 1903, an infection after an operation for appendicitis, aged fifty-six, and after his death a thirty-man syndicate took control of the company, in the library's summary. The presidency between the founder's death and the rubber chief's rise is not documented in the record reached and is named in the closing entry.

The founder-to-institution course: The Beigers' second act was civic at family size: they founded Mishawaka's East United Methodist Church, supported the First United Methodist Church, and established Beiger School; the mansion Martin began in 1903 and did not live to finish, and his widow Susie Beiger's bequest of it as a home for the elderly, stand in the Women Founders entry below and the Wealth section. The younger Eberhart's gifts were land for the public: the two lots at First and Hill Streets he donated for the Carnegie library, opened 5 May 1916, and the St. Joe Valley Country Club ground he bought in 1920 and donated to the city, opened as a municipal course in 1929 and carrying his name still in the Eberhart-Petro Municipal Golf Course. The institutions' own courses are the Libraries and Parks sections'; the gifts are the founders'.

Sources:

1. Ball Band — "The Beigers and the woolen company" (the 1867 purchase; the incorporation of 31 January 1874 at $25,000 and its five incorporators, on Howard 1907; the workforce carried at 25 vs 3); "The all-knit boot and the reorganization of 1886" (the joint invention; Eberhart as organizer at $200,000 capital; the officer roster; the $100,000 half interest in the patent; the Studebaker directors and the November 1887 half-interest sale; 140–150 employees and $200,000 of business about 1893); "The people: Beigers, Eberharts, and Saunders" (the two F. G. Eberharts separated; Martin's death, 26 September 1903; the churches and Beiger School; Fred Eberhart's library-land gift).
2. Great Fortunes — "The Eberharts" and "Frederick George Eberhart" (Part Two) — the $100,000 patent transaction priced; the golf course bought 1920, donated, opened 1929 as the Eberhart-Petro course; the library site at First and Hill.