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Mishawaka · Earl's Tavern · 1833–1834
The oldest lodging in the record is a tavern kept by a man the town's founder had ruined, if the tavern-keeper's own account is believed. William L. Earl had been Alanson M. Hurd's partner in the iron works and the town plat; he charged that Hurd swindled him out of his interests in both, and by 1833 he was keeping tavern at Mishawaka. The date is fixed by a witness's memory of the sky: Earl was "keeping tavern there, says Mrs. Merritt, at the time of the great meteoric shower, in 1833" — the Leonid storm of November 1833, the night the stars fell. David R. Leeper's reminiscences, collected in Timothy Howard's 1907 county history, are the source, and they carry Earl's grievance with his tavern: the charge against Hurd stands in the record as Earl's allegation, printed here as he left it. The stand did double duty from the start — Mishawaka's First Presbyterian church, organized 25 July 1834, held its first worship in Earl's Tavern, a congregation meeting in a barroom because the settlement had no other roof to lend it. By 1834 Earl had moved his license across the river, to keep South Bend's Michigan Hotel; the Mishawaka stand passes out of the record with him. No earlier tavern, inn or public house is named for the settlement in any source reached: the record of Mishawaka lodging opens with Earl, in the year of the falling stars.
Sources:
- Leeper's reminiscences, in Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), vol. 1 — Earl keeping tavern at the meteoric shower of 1833; the swindle charge as Earl's allegation; read first-hand in the LDS Genealogy transcription of the volume.
- This build's Religion fragment — First Presbyterian's first worship in Earl's Tavern, 1834.