Alanson M. Hurd: Eight Hundred Dollars of Townsite, and No Ledger of the Return

1832 – 1835, and the record after

The fortune: Mishawaka begins as one man's speculation, and its entry price is the best-documented figure in this section. Alanson M. Hurd, a Detroit businessman, heard of the bog-iron deposits south of the St. Joseph River, sent William Earl to scout them in the summer of 1832, came himself, and chose the rapids over the upriver deposit for the water power. On 1 January 1833 he bought the 640-acre School Section 16 at $1.25 an acre — $800 in all — built Indiana's first successful iron blast furnace on the south bank, and in the summer of 1833 platted the Village of St. Joseph Iron Works on forty square blocks around it (the founding record stands whole in the Story of Mishawaka section). He was sole proprietor until December 1834, when he formed the St. Joseph Iron Company with John Orr, John Deming, and J. E. Hollister, himself as first president; the legislature chartered the company on 22 January 1835.

Its scale: There the pricing stops, and the contrast with South Bend is the finding. South Bend's founding plat survives in a partner's ledger priced to the cent — costs in, return out. No equivalent account of Hurd's speculation appears in any source consulted: not in Howard's county history, not in the city's commissioned history, not in the journal literature. What the record carries instead is the retail side at deed strength — the townsite selling lot by lot. Deed records quoted in a settler's documented biography price two 1837 sales: Lot 11 on Mill Street at $700 on 16 March 1837, and Lot 2 on Front Street at $306 on mortgage that September — a single Mill Street lot fetching nearly the price Hurd had paid for the whole 640 acres four years before. And the city's commissioned history states the shape of his exit in one clause: Hurd "sold most of the land he had bought to developers eager to invest in a growing village." At what prices, over what years, and for what total, the published record does not say. No estate or probate figure for Hurd appears in any source consulted, and none is stated here; the county deed books that would price his sales survive and are the named settling source.

What it left: The town itself — the furnace, the plat, the water power every later fortune in this section used — and no named philanthropy and no great house. Of the founding generation's money, Hurd's is the fortune the record documents as a beginning and declines to total.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History (city-commissioned; the city's published text) — the 1832 scouting, the 1 January 1833 purchase of Section 16 at $1.25 an acre, the sole proprietorship to December 1834 and the company's formation, and Hurd's sale of most of the land to developers.
2. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), and the Indiana Historical Bureau marker 71.1968.4 — the furnace's standing as Indiana's first successful iron blast furnace; the 22 January 1835 charter.
3. Biographical record of John Ham (WikiTree), quoting the St. Joseph County deed records — Lot 11, Mill Street, $700, 16 March 1837; Lot 2, Front Street, $306 on mortgage, 16 September 1837.
4. Ward Baker, "Mishawaka on the Eve of Conflict," Indiana Magazine of History — the works and town as the period record carries them, with the deed and plat citations.