The clerk's desk: keeper of the record

1899 – today

The Egglestons and Ganser: The clerk is the city's memory with a signature, and Mishawaka's first city clerk was Henry C. Eggleston, named in Howard's rosters of May 1899 and May 1900. In the roster of May 1902 the desk has passed to Horace G. Eggleston — the surname holds the desk across the change of hands, whether as kin or as coincidence the record reached does not say, and the two men are printed as the rosters give them, unmerged. In May 1904 the clerk is Francis X. Ganser; in November 1905, Walter Michael — who matters twice in this section, for he is the same Walter Michael the 1921 directory shows translated to the controller's desk, a fiscal servant's sixteen-year arc across two of the city's paper offices, each end of it documented and the middle his to keep.

DeLorenzi: The next clerk the record names is the 1921 directory's: Joseph DeLorenzi, city clerk, doubling — as the Government section notes from the same page — as clerk of the Board of Public Works, the clerk's office serving as the government's paper memory in fact as well as in name. Between Michael in 1905 and DeLorenzi in 1921, and between DeLorenzi and the next named holder, the succession is not carried in the sources read; the gaps are named at the end of this entry.

Oscar Van De Putte: The directory of 1949 names the clerk: Oscar Van De Putte, 3 City Hall — and names him again as secretary of the Board of Public Works and Safety, the clerk's second hat surviving from DeLorenzi's day into his. The directory of 1956 names him clerk still. The directory of 1963 names him again, at a desk whose title has changed under him: "Clerk-Treasurer, Oscar Van De Putte" — the two fiscal offices the charter generation elected separately, and that DeLorenzi and Kimball held separately in 1921, combined in one elective office with Van De Putte sitting in it, the city's keeper of the record and of the purse in one person. Three directories across fourteen years put him at the desk; when he first took it and when he left it are not in the sources reached. One caution the 1963 book itself raises: its classified page names him clerk-treasurer while its alphabetical pages no longer list him as a Mishawaka householder, his wife Ethel appearing there alone — whether the classified page lagged the canvass or the alphabetical canvass missed him, the book disagrees with itself, and the disagreement is printed rather than resolved. His endpoints are a named gap: the settling records are the Enterprise's and Tribune's obituary columns, searched through the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library's obituary index, and the clerk's own minute books, in which his signature's first and last appearances are the tenure itself.

The modern desk: Between Van De Putte and the present the succession runs through the clerk-treasurer era into the modern elected clerkship, and the holders of those decades are not named in the sources read for this section — the Government section names the settling source, the run of the city's annual financial reports, whose officials schedules name the officers year by year. The desk's current holder is documented at both ends of the modern record: Deborah S. Block, City Clerk in the officials schedule of the 2021 financial report, filing for the office again in the state's candidate lists of 2019 and 2023 under the name Debbie Ladyga-Block, her office issuing the council's notices over her name through the autumn of 2025, with Raven S. Boston as chief deputy and Michael Hixenbaugh as deputy in the notice of 30 September 2025, and her signature — Debbie Ladyga-Block — on the minutes of 2026.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 1 — clerks Henry C. Eggleston (1899, 1900), Horace G. Eggleston (1902), Francis X. Ganser (1904), Walter Michael (1905).
2. R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend City Directory (1921), Mishawaka section — City Clerk Joseph DeLorenzi; City Controller Walter Michael.
3. R. L. Polk & Co., directories of 1949, 1956 and 1963 — Clerk, then Clerk-Treasurer, Oscar Van De Putte (the 1963 directory's classified and alphabetical pages in the disagreement stated).
4. City of Mishawaka, Annual Financial Report (2021) and Office of the City Clerk notices (September–December 2025), as carried in the Government and Spine sections — Deborah S. Block, her deputies of 2025, and the minutes signature Debbie Ladyga-Block; Indiana Secretary of State, municipal candidate lists (2019, 2023) — Debbie Ladyga-Block filed for Mishawaka City Clerk.