The Free Press and the three birthdays of the Enterprise: 1853, 1854, 1855

The founding · the conflict printed whole

Mishawaka's permanent paper began as the Free Press, founded by DeWitt Clinton Ireland — and the record gives its birth three different years. Ireland's preparation is not in dispute. He was a printer's apprentice in Schuyler Colfax's St. Joseph Valley Register office in South Bend — the Daily Astorian, his own later paper, said in 1880 that he learned the business "under the instruction of Hon. Schuyler Colfax" — and at nineteen, in the words of Roger Tetlow's doctoral study of his life, he "decided to settle in Mishawaka, a small town six miles west of South Bend," and start a newspaper. He owned no plant: "Ireland did not have his own plant and set up the newspaper, and printed it in the office of the (Michigan) Republic, a newspaper located in a small town about six miles north of South Bend, just across the border into Michigan." Mishawaka's permanent paper was thus a Mishawaka editorial product printed in Michigan — the town's press, at its founding, was an address and an editor, not a press.

The year 1853 is the county histories' date. Chapman (1880): "The Free Press was begun in 1853, by D. C. Ireland, and continued by him for two years, when he sold to L. A. Elliott, who changed its name to Mishawaka Enterprise." Howard (1907) repeats the structure: "In 1853 the people seemed to be ready for a permanent newspaper. In that year D. C. Ireland began the publication of the Free Press. After two years Mr. Ireland sold out to L. A. Elliott." De Kever's city history follows the same line: the Free Press founded by D. C. Ireland in 1853. On this account the sale to Elliott falls in 1855.

The year 1855 is the contemporary papers' date, and it comes with documents. Tetlow's thesis, working from the Register's own file, quotes the announcement: "Mishawaka Free Press — We are glad to learn that our sister town is to have a newspaper under the above name, to be commenced on the 7th of July. It is to be published by D. C. Ireland, a practical printer and is to take independent grounds." The first issue came out on July 7, 1855, and the Register welcomed it a fortnight later: "We have received the first number of the Mishawaka Free Press; its matter and typographical appearance reflect great credit upon the Editor and Publisher, D. C. Ireland." A year on, the Register printed the paper's own first-year notice: the Free Press "has closed its first year, and upon entering its second… will doff its neutrality and earnestly battle for Free Speech, Free Press, Free Labor, Free Kansas, and Fremont." In the following month — August 1856, on the account Ward N. Baker, Mishawaka's historian, gave Tetlow — Ireland sold to Larry A. Elliott, who changed the name to the Mishawaka Enterprise. The Daily Astorian's 1880 retrospective on its founder agrees with the Register file: the Free Press "was issued at Mishawaka, Indiana, in the year 1855."

The year 1854 is the paper's own trade testimony, given twice, sixty years apart in spirit. Howard's biography of Edward A. Jernegan — the man who bought the Enterprise in 1872 and conducted it for decades — states that the paper he purchased "had been established in 1854." Ayer's American Newspaper Annual and Directory for 1920, printing the establishment year the paper itself returned to the directory, gives the Enterprise's founding as 1854; Ayer's 1952 directory gives 1854 again. And in August 1894 the neighboring Goshen Weekly News noted, as press gossip, that "the Mishawaka Enterprise has just begun its Fortieth year" — arithmetic that puts the paper's first year in 1854–55, not 1853. The directory testimony then drifts once more: Ayer's 1962 edition prints the Enterprise's establishment as 1855.

The conflict is printed whole and not harmonized. The narrative county histories say 1853, and give the sale to Elliott two years on; the only documents in the set printed in the 1850s themselves — the Register's announcement, welcome and first-year notices — date the first number to July 7, 1855, and the sale to the following August; the paper's own later returns to the trade directories say 1854, then once 1855. No Free Press issue survives in the library file to settle it from a masthead. What is not in dispute is the sequence — Ireland, then Elliott and the Enterprise name — and the paper's unbroken descent from the Free Press to the present Enterprise.

One adjacent claim is printed as the dispute it is. Turnbull's History of Oregon Newspapers — Ireland went west and founded the Astorian in 1873 — carried Schuyler Colfax into the Free Press's ownership. Ward Baker, who wrote a history of Mishawaka's newspapers, disputed it in a letter Tetlow prints: Colfax owned the St. Joseph Valley Register, the South Bend paper in whose office Ireland had apprenticed — not the Mishawaka Free Press. The apprenticeship is documented; the ownership is not, and this section prints the claim only as Turnbull's, contradicted by the town's own historian.

Sources

1. Roger Thomas Tetlow, DeWitt Clinton Ireland and the Astorian, doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon (1972), the Mishawaka chapter, quoting the St. Joseph Valley Register's notices of 1855–56, the Daily Astorian of August 28, 1880, and Ward N. Baker's letter of January 10, 1972, read first-hand.
2. Chas. C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), the county press chapter, read first-hand.
3. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), "The Press," and vol. 2, the Jernegan biography ("established in 1854"), read first-hand.
4. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History, on the Free Press, 1853.
5. N. W. Ayer & Son's American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1920), the Mishawaka entry: Enterprise established 1854; Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals (1952): 1854; (1962): 1855, read first-hand.
6. Goshen Weekly News, August 17, 1894 — "The Mishawaka Enterprise has just begun its Fortieth year" — as carried in the newspaper's own archive service.