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1830 — 1832
Settlement reached the rapids a few years before the works did: The earliest white settlers near the future townsite came in 1830 — the families the record names as Coe, Mote and Skinner — followed in 1831 by families from Ireland. In 1831 and 1832 Joseph Pemberton, Hart, and St. Combe built cabins in the vicinity. Pemberton's place in this record is out of proportion to a cabin: he set up a lathe, and the city history, on historian Janice Bridges's work, counts his lathe the first manufacturing in the area — a settler's machine turning wood a year or two before the iron furnace that would define the town was even projected. These were farm and cabin settlements scattered near the rapids, not a town. The town came from a different direction entirely: from Detroit money, bog iron, and water power, in the summer of 1832.
Sources:
- Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the Coe, Mote and Skinner families (1830), the Ireland families (1831), the Pemberton, Hart and St. Combe cabins (1831–32), and Pemberton's lathe as the first manufacturing, on Janice Bridges's research.