Hurd's plat as an instrument

15 JULY 1833 — 23 OCTOBER 1835

The founding document of the city is a surveyor's description, and Howard prints it whole: Alanson M. Hurd's dedication of the village of St. Joseph Iron Works, signed 15 July 1833, describes a plat of fifty-two and seven-tenths acres: its exterior line "begins on the top of the bluff, on the south side of the St. Joseph river, and runs thence south seventy poles to a stake," west and north by stakes in like measure, "and thence, as the river meanders, one hundred fourteen and one-half poles" back to the beginning. The subdivision's measure is stated in the same breath: "Each lot is four by eight perches, containing, of course, thirty-two square perches each. The alleys are sixteen and a half feet wide, and the width of each street is marked in them respectively." The ground is identified in the survey's own terms — "the north part of lot number six and the northeast part of lot number five, in school section number sixteen, township thirty-seven north of range number three east" — those being lots of the school section's own subdivision, the trustees' divisions of the entry above. The plat was "laid out and surveyed for Earl and Hurd, by T. W. Bray, St. Joseph county surveyor" — Tyra W. Bray, the county's surveyor — and acknowledged the same 15 July 1833 not by Hurd himself but "by William L. Earl, his attorney-in-fact": the Detroit promoter's scout, holding his power of attorney, executed the founding instrument on the ground. On the plat the river is marked as the "Great St. Joseph River."

The instrument had a second life within two years. "The original plat was re-filed by A. M. Hurd, on February 21, 1835, together with additions on the north, west and south. It is this second plat that is usually referred to as the 'Original Town'" (Howard). And on 23 October 1835 Hurd filed a further plat of out lots, "lying on the west of the original town, and opposite the island in the river at that point" — the river lots of the founding plat, laid against the island at the rapids' west end — on which, Howard notes, "the name of the principal east and west street is recognized as the 'Vistula Road.'" The lot dimensions Howard preserves — four by eight perches, a fifth of an acre to the lot — settle at instrument strength part of the lot-level detail the Neighborhoods section named as a gap for the recorder's books; the full lot schedule of the plat, its block numbering and street widths as marked, still stands in those books, and the 1875 atlas's printed plat of the city's south part (pages 72–73) is the published derivative.

Sources:

1. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (1907), Chapter X, Sec. 1 — Hurd's dedication and description quoted whole; the acknowledgment by Earl as attorney-in-fact; Bray's survey; the re-filing of 21 February 1835; the out-lots plat of 23 October 1835 and the Vistula Road.
2. An Illustrated Historical Atlas of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1875) — the town laid out in July 1833; the printed plat of Mishawaka, south part, at pages 72–73.