The postmasters: the federal government's local face

1834 – 1963

The office that named the town: The Mishawaka post office was established in the spring of 1834, before the town had the name — and, on Chapman's telling, the office gave the town its name: the Indian name "Mishawaka" was given to the post office "at the suggestion of Mr. Werrington, who was appointed postmaster." The name reaches this build only through the 1880 book's damaged type (its modern transcription reads "Verringtoii" and "Werrington" in the same line's two tellings), and no source reached confirms the man's name in a cleaner hand; the first postmaster of Mishawaka therefore stands in this section as the record gives him — a surname the county history cannot quite print, attached to the most consequential suggestion any Mishawaka servant ever made.

The documented points: The points the record does give are these. E. Volney Bingham, postmaster during Cleveland's administration, in the entry above. By 1898 the office has a long-serving deputy: William E. Butterworth, a native son born 17 October 1860, a druggist from 1880 to 1892, who became deputy postmaster in 1898 "first under Mr. Gaylor and later under Mr. Shaw, the present postmaster" — Howard's biography of 1907, which gives the succession two holders in one sentence: a Mr. Gaylor, postmaster at the century's turn (his given name not in the source, and not to be borrowed from the mayor of a later decade who shares the surname), and a Mr. Shaw, postmaster in 1907, with Butterworth the office's working continuity under both, "systematic and careful in the discharge of his duties, courteous to all," the biographer's verdict on the deputy the town actually dealt with. In 1921 the directory names the office whole: Postmaster John A. Herzog — the ex-mayor of 1910–1914 at the federal desk, the mayor-to-postmaster path the patronage age ran on — with David H. Wilber, a councilman of the 1904 roster, as assistant postmaster and Eugene Kei… (the surname cut in the text reached) as superintendent of mails.

Joseph M. Bowen: The last postmaster the record names holds the office across the same three directories that hold Van De Putte and Pressler: Joseph M. Bowen, postmaster in the classified pages of 1949 (the office at 120 South Church, Wm. F. … as assistant postmaster, the surname cut in the text reached, and Jesse K. Me… as superintendent of mails), postmaster in 1956, and postmaster in 1963 — fourteen years at least at the federal desk, the exact contemporary of the clerk-treasurer and the fire chief in their long tenures, the three of them the mid-century city's continuity in its three sovereignties: city, city, and federal. One conflict attends him, printed whole: the 1956 book's alphabetical pages list a "Jos. F. (Teckla) Bowen, postmaster PO, h319 Edgewater Dr." against the classified pages' Joseph M. Bowen in three successive directories. The classified listing is the office's own entry and governs the name as printed here; whether the alphabetical entry is the same man with a misread initial or a kinsman at another office's desk, the record reached does not settle, and the variant stands in the sources below rather than in the man's name. After 1963 the succession leaves the directories this build reads, and the modern postmasters of Mishawaka stand as a named gap, the Postmaster Finder's lists and the appointment register named to close it.

Sources:

1. C. C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880) — the post office established spring 1834; the name Mishawaka given at the suggestion of the first postmaster, the name damaged in the book's type as stated.
2. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 2 — William E. Butterworth, deputy postmaster from 1898, first under Mr. Gaylor, later under Mr. Shaw, postmaster in 1907; E. Volney Bingham, postmaster under Cleveland.
3. R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend City Directory (1921), Mishawaka section — Postmaster John A. Herzog; Assistant Postmaster David H. Wilber.
4. R. L. Polk & Co., directories of 1949, 1956 and 1963 — Postmaster Joseph M. Bowen (classified Government Offices, all three); the 1956 alphabetical entry "Bowen Jos F (Teckla) postmaster PO h319 Edgewater dr" printed as the conflict it is.