The Tests: The 1892 List, the Richest-Man Question, and Forbes

1892 – 2026

The 1892 list: The New-York Tribune's American Millionaires (1892), its survey of Americans "reputed to be worth a million or more," counted thirty-seven millionaires in Indiana, of whom three were in South Bend, on the Crawfordsville Daily Journal's summary of 18 May 1892 carried in the South Bend wealth file. The chronology is consistent with it: the record's first Mishawaka millionaire, Martin Beiger, is dated "by 1900," eight years after the list closed.

The richest man of each era: The record names an era's richest Mishawaka man exactly once, and prospectively rather than as a ranking: the Beiger Mansion's account calls Martin Beiger the town's first millionaire, which is a claim about 1900 and about sequence, printed in the Beiger entry as the house's own words. For no later era — not the Dodge and Mix years, not the rubber-era Eberharts, not Kapson's, not the present one — does any source consulted call a named man Mishawaka's richest, and this section invents no ranking to fill the silence. Who held the most at each date is, on the published record, unanswerable beyond the priced fragments the entries above carry.

The Forbes test: Run against Forbes's own lists as reported, the modern test returns the same negative as South Bend's: no resident of Mishawaka appears on the Forbes 400 or the Forbes World's Billionaires list in the sources consulted. Indiana's places on the latest Forbes 400 are held from Bloomington and Indianapolis (the Indianapolis Star's report of September 2026, as carried in the South Bend wealth file). Mishawaka's modern fortunes are dealer-scale and foundation-published; none is Forbes-sized in print, and none is stated to be.

Sources:

1. Crawfordsville Daily Journal, 18 May 1892, summarizing the New-York Tribune's American Millionaires (1892), as carried in the South Bend wealth file — Indiana's thirty-seven listed millionaires, three in South Bend.
2. The Beiger Mansion, published history — "Mishawaka's first millionaire," dated by 1900.
3. Indianapolis Star, September 2026, reporting the Forbes 400, as carried in the South Bend wealth file — Indiana's entries held from Bloomington and Indianapolis.