The women founders — tested whole

1882 – the present · the founding record, positive and negative at the size the evidence gives

The test, stated: The Businesses and Ball Band records of this build were read for women standing as founders of Mishawaka enterprises, and the result divides exactly as the nineteenth-century record usually divides: no woman stands as founder of a Mishawaka manufacturing firm in the record reached — while the city's charitable and educational institutions were, repeatedly and documentably, founded by women. Both halves are printed; the second is not a consolation for the first, and the first is stated as the record's shape, not as the century's excuse.

The orphans' home — founded by three women and a windmill maker's match: Mishawaka's largest nineteenth-century charity began at a state convention. In May 1882 three local members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union — Julia E. Work, Myra Clark, and Mrs. Henry Milburn — attended the state WCTU convention in Indianapolis and heard Frances Willard speak. Palmer C. Perkins, the windmill founder of this section, donated $2,000 to establish an orphanage in Mishawaka provided the town would contribute the same amount; the county WCTU acted within weeks, and in July 1882 the St. Joseph County Orphans Home opened on Vistula Street with Julia Work as its director — twenty-two children in residence by December. The founding's structure is the fact: a women's society as organizer, an industrialist's matching gift as capital, a town's subscription as the match. Work was the home's superintendent from 20 June 1882 to February 1891, when the feud the Charities section tells whole split it: she resigned, carried the counties' contracts to a new Northern Indiana Orphans' Home at La Porte, opened 18 March 1891 — a founder twice over, the second time in her own name — and ran its Plymouth successor, the Julia E. Work Training School, until 1919. The Mishawaka home she left behind kept its ground and built its permanent home in 1907; its successor serves children on Mishawaka ground to this day.

The children's museum — an Eberhart's idea and a supervisor's office: The Hannah Lindahl Children's Museum was proposed by Carol Eberhart Hillier — of the woolen family's third generation — and carried by Hannah M. Lindahl, the School City's elementary supervisor, who with a member of the administrative staff persuaded the district of its value. The first meeting of the museum committee was held on 30 January 1946; the museum opened that year behind Emmons School and was named in Lindahl's honor. A founder by proposal and a founder by office, both women, both documented — the institution stood as the schools' museum and archive for the rest of its documented life.

A founder by bequest, and a congregation's founder: Susie Beiger, Martin Beiger's widow, stands in the record as co-founder with her husband of Mishawaka's East United Methodist Church and of Beiger School, and as a founder by her will: the mansion her husband began and she completed was left as a home for the elderly, and the Beiger Home for the Elderly opened on 1 February 1930 and housed over one hundred women across its life, on her estate of $1.55 million, of which $210,000 was left for the home's maintenance — the figures are the Wealth section's, pointed to here because the bequest is the founding act. At the boundary of the class stands Maria Katharina Kasper, who founded the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ at Dernbach in 1851: her congregation's three sisters reached Mishawaka on 25 October 1878 and nursed the city's sick for thirty-two years before the hospital of 1910 — the founding is Dernbach's, the mission Mishawaka's, and the three sisters' names are not carried in the record reached, a gap named here because the class is this section's subject.

The modern test — Hannah's House: Hannah's House of Michiana, the maternity home founded in 1993 on the federal record the Charities section carries, is attributed as a founding to Francina Pendergrass — named as the house's founder and chief executive in a 2019 university social-work course's organizational study — at exactly that carrier's strength: the organization's own published history reached for this build does not name its founder, and the attribution stands here as a documented lead, with the house's own records and its federal filings named as the settling sources. The home's documented course — seven women at a time, no government or United Way money — is the Charities section's.

Women in the corporate record, at founding size: Where the founding documents do carry women, they carry them in the secretary-treasurer's chair, and the pattern is printed as a fact of the record: Laura Kamm, secretary of the Kamm & Schellinger corporation at its 1883 incorporation; Mrs. Rose I. Gates, secretary-treasurer of the Gates Chevrolet corporation in the 1956 canvass, with her husband president and her sons vice-president and general manager; Mrs. Betty (Bette) Kapson, secretary-treasurer of Jordan Motors in 1956 and of Jordan Ford City in 1963, her husband president in both. And the contrast that completes the test is the workforce: the woolen and rubber works employed women by the thousand across the century — as employees of men's companies in every account the record reached, which is itself the finding.

Sources:

1. Charities — "The temperance women and the windmill money" and "Julia Work's home" (the May 1882 convention and the three WCTU women, on the St. Joseph County Public Library's account; Perkins's $2,000 matching donation; the July 1882 opening and Work's directorship; her superintendency of 20 June 1882 to February 1891, the feud's two tellings, and the La Porte opening of 18 March 1891, on Donna M. Nelson's history of her institutions); "Hannah's House" (the 1993 founding on the federal record; the house's funding discipline).
2. Museums — the Hannah Lindahl Children's Museum (Carol Eberhart Hillier's proposal; Lindahl's office and the persuasion of the district; the committee's first meeting, 30 January 1946; the 1946 opening behind Emmons School; the naming in Lindahl's honor, on the South Bend Area Genealogical Society's account of the museum's own record).
3. Ball Band and Great Fortunes — the Beigers (the churches and Beiger School founded; Susie Beiger's will and the Beiger Home for the Elderly, opened 1 February 1930; the estate at $1.55 million with $210,000 for the home, printed as the carriers' two figure-pairs in the Wealth section); Hospitals — "The nursing sisters" (Maria Katharina Kasper's founding of the Poor Handmaids at Dernbach in 1851; the three sisters' arrival of 25 October 1878, their names not carried).
4. Businesses & Banks — "Kamm & Schellinger" (Laura Kamm, secretary, 1883); Dealerships — the 1956 Jordan Motors canvass (Betty Kapson, secretary-treasurer) and the 1963 Jordan Ford City canvass (Bette Kapson, secretary-treasurer), and the 1956 Gates canvass (Rose I. Gates, secretary-treasurer).
5. University social-work course organizational study of Hannah's House (2019), the only carrier reached naming a founder — Francina Pendergrass as founder and chief executive; printed at that strength, corroboration named as the gap.