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before 1872–1872 · the earliest-known collection
The beginning: Mishawaka's library history opens with a name and a loss. The National Register nomination for the city's Carnegie library — the fullest single account of the library's early course, prepared in 1997 from the library's own record and the press of the day — states it in one sentence: "The earliest-known collection was known as the Maclure library which was destroyed by fire in 1872." Nothing further about the collection stands in the record reached: not its founding year, not its keeper, not its size. The year of its destruction is the year of the Great Fire of 5 September 1872, which swept the town and burned, among much else, the Enterprise's office in Edward A. Jernegan's first year of ownership — the fire stands whole in this history's newspapers and spine records. The nomination does not in words tie the Maclure library's burning to that fire, and the tie is printed here as what it is: the same town, the same year, and no second town fire of 1872 in the record.Enterprise record named as its settling sources.
Sources:
- Adrian Scott Fine, National Register of Historic Places nomination, Carnegie Library (Mishawaka), Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, 24 November 1997, section 8 — the Maclure library's name and its destruction by fire in 1872.
- The newspapers and spine records of this history — the Great Fire of 5 September 1872 and the Enterprise office, carried whole there.