Frederick George Eberhart: The Rubber-Era Eberhart — a Golf Course, a Mansion, a Library's Ground

1914 – 1931, and the gifts

The fortune: The second Eberhart fortune in this record is the younger Frederick George Eberhart — the Ball Band president's son of the Ball Band file's people record, separated there from his same-named father, the 1886 vice-president — the Eberhart of the rubber era, a manufacturer with the Rubber & Woolen Company in the 1910 census. His money shows in the record in three documented forms, and each is priced or placed. The first is credit: by a memorandum of agreement of 24 February 1914, F. G. Eberhart of Mishawaka, with three South Bend men, guaranteed the notes of the Modern Specialties Manufacturing Company — notes of $2,500, $1,000, and $11,500 across 1915 — and when the company failed, Eberhart paid $10,154.41 on his guaranty, credited 20 May 1916, and litigated the remaining $2,326.36 and the agreement's effect to the Indiana Supreme Court. The case stands in the Businesses file for what it documents about the family: a Mishawaka Eberhart standing behind a manufacturer's credit, in five figures, in his own name.

The gifts: The second form is land for the public. Fred G. Eberhart donated the site of Mishawaka's Carnegie library — two lots at First and Hill Streets, a block from the plant — on which the library rose with a $30,000 Carnegie grant to A. F. Wickes's design, opening 5 May 1916 (the Libraries file owns the building's course; the gift is the fortune's). The third is the city's golf course. The St. Joe Valley Country Club, founded 1900, closed in 1920 when Frederick George Eberhart bought the ground; he donated the course to the city — it opened as a municipal course in 1929 and carries his name still, the Eberhart-Petro Municipal Golf Course, named for Eberhart and Mayor Mason Petro — and kept a bluff plot above it, containing the original clubhouse, for his own house. The Eberhart Mansion, designed in 1929 by Austin & Shambleau and occupied in 1931, was built of bricks fired specially for the project by the Old Virginia Brick Company of Salem, Virginia — a Colonial Revival house on the bluff over the course he had given away, and the second of this section's two fortune houses, the Eberharts' answer to the Beiger Mansion across the river's bend. No construction cost for it, and no estate or probate total for Frederick George Eberhart, appears in the sources consulted; the fortune's published scale is its acts — a five-figure guaranty honored, a library's ground, and a golf course given whole.

Sources:

1. Businesses file of this build, from the Indiana Supreme Court's report — the guaranty agreement of 24 February 1914; the 1915 notes of $2,500, $1,000, and $11,500; Eberhart's payment of $10,154.41 credited 20 May 1916; the suit over the remaining $2,326.36.
2. Libraries file of this build, from the National Register record for the Old Mishawaka Carnegie Library (NRHP 98001048) — Fred G. Eberhart's donation of the two-lot site at First and Hill; the $30,000 Carnegie grant; the opening of 5 May 1916.
3. Parks & River file of this build, from the course's and the Eberhart Mansion's own accounts — the St. Joe Valley Country Club's closing in 1920 on Eberhart's purchase; the donation of the course to the city; the 1929 opening; the retained bluff plot.
4. Eberhart Mansion account, as quoted in the golf-history record (Golf Club Atlas) — the purchase of the entire course in the 1920s, the donation, the retained plot with the original clubhouse; Austin & Shambleau architects; the specially fired Old Virginia Brick; designed 1929, occupied 1931.
5. Ball Band file of this build — the separation of the two Frederick George Eberharts, father and son, and the younger's rubber-era course.