Four plats on two banks

1835 — 1837

For three years the "town" at the rapids was four towns: Hurd's St. Joseph Iron Works did not hold the ground alone for long. On April 2, 1835, William Barbee and Henry Harman made their own plat immediately east of the works, and titled it, outright, the "Plat of the Town of Mishawaka" — the first recorded plat on which the name Mishawaka appears, as Howard notes; the settlement it planted was known as Barbee Town. Across the river the north bank filled in against them: Indiana City, platted by Joseph Battell, James R. Lawrence and Grove Lawrence on the south half of Section 9 and the northwest fraction of Section 16, its plat acknowledged June 28, 1836; and Fowler's village, platted by George W. R. Fowler, with H. H. Fowler's Addition recorded March 8, 1837. By the close of 1837 there were no less than four independent town plats at the rapids, besides additions — St. Joseph Iron Works and Mishawaka on the south side, Indiana City and Fowler's village on the north — four paper towns, four sets of proprietors, one fall of water, and a single economy of furnace, mill and ford underneath them. The confusion of names and jurisdictions was the kind the legislature existed to end, and it ended it the following February.

Sources:

1. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), Chapter X — the four plats in his sections 1–6: Barbee & Harman's plat of April 2, 1835 (acknowledged April 20, 1835) as the first plat bearing the name Mishawaka; Indiana City's plat acknowledged June 28, 1836 with its section description; Fowler's Addition of March 8, 1837; the count of four independent plats at the close of 1837.
2. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the plats' positions on the two banks and Barbee Town east of the works.