The township frame: Penn Township's series

1832 — 2020

The city sits inside a township older than itself, and the township counts everyone — inside the line and out: Penn Township was one of the three original townships laid out by the county board on 6 May 1832 — Penn taking all of the county east of Range Two East in the first division — before Mishawaka existed as a plat, let alone a city; the act that united the four plats in February 1838 fixed the town "in the township of Penn," and the census's county-subdivision tables list the city under Penn Township in every volume pulled for this record, from the nineteenth century through the 1980 reports. The township's series, from the state's compilation of the decennial censuses, runs: 5,678 in 1890; 8,117 in 1900; 15,410 in 1910; 17,279 in 1920; 32,511 in 1930; 33,483 in 1940; 42,938 in 1950; 47,330 in 1960; 53,276 in 1970; 56,471 in 1980; 59,879 in 1990; 64,322 in 2000; 66,198 in 2010; and 68,698 in 2020. The township counts the city within it. The counts are the township's, and they are never merged into the city's series or substituted for it.

The balance — the township outside the city line — is the suburban story in one column. In 1920 the whole township outside the city held 2,084 people: farm families and the Twin Branch settlement around a city that was 88 percent of its township. By 1950 the balance was 10,025; by 1960, 13,969; by 1970, 17,759 — and there it has stood, within a few hundred, for fifty years: 16,270 in 1980, 17,271 in 1990, 17,765 in 2000, 17,946 in 2010, 17,635 in 2020. The township outside the line holds a second municipality — Osceola, a separate town with its own government at the township's east — together with the unincorporated subdivisions of the postwar decades. Read against the city's series, the frame explains the city's two quietest decades: in the 1950s the balance grew by 3,944 while the city grew by 448, and in the 1960s the balance grew by 3,790 while the city grew, on the old ground, by 901 — the region's growth was real, and for twenty years most of it was addressed to the township, not the city. The city's share of its township, which peaked at 88.1 percent in 1930, bottomed at 66.7 percent in 1970 and has climbed back to 74.3 percent — the annexations and the infill of the staircase decades, recovering ground the balance took in the boom years of the suburb.

One divergence is printed with the frame, because the frame is where it belongs. The Story of Mishawaka section of this history, on the 1838 act and the census subdivision tables, places the city wholly in Penn Township, and this section follows the Story of Mishawaka section. The modern reference record — the standard gazetteer-derived listings — describes the city as lying in Penn, Clay and Harris townships, which would reflect the far-north annexations of the mall era crossing the township lines at the county's north edge. The two statements are not reconciled in the sources read; the conflict is named here and flagged in the note for the assembly, and nothing in either series turns on it, because the township series is printed as the township's own either way.

Sources:

1. STATS Indiana (Indiana Business Research Center) — "Indiana Township Census Counts, 1890 to 2020": Penn Township 5,678 (1890) to 68,698 (2020), census by census, as printed above; the compilation is of the decennial censuses.
2. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) — the original townships of 6 May 1832 (Penn, Portage and Olive) and Penn's first bounds. Indiana Local Laws (1837–1838), Chap. CCXXXIII — the town fixed in Penn Township; U.S. Census Bureau minor-civil-division tables (1950 and 1970 volumes) — Mishawaka city listed under Penn Township, both as carried in the Story of Mishawaka section of this history.
3. U.S. Census Bureau — Penn Township's area, 63.58 square miles, and its 2000 count of 64,322, as carried in the standard reference record. The balances and shares are computed from the two series.