The Horse Economy's Animal Side: Livery Stables, and the Missing Veterinarian

The directory rolls, 1868–1921; the searches of November 2026

The farms and transit files own the horse economy's work. Its animal side — the trade that kept the horses themselves — stands in the directory rolls at exactly directory size, and it has a beginning, a middle, and a telling end. The beginning is the village's first directory roll, 1868, which carries two livery stables: C. E. Burt's and F. Wilklow's — Wilklow standing in the roster's first-roll narrative among the mill town's founding trades, "F. Wilklow at the livery," alongside the brewers, the cooperage, and the boot-and-shoe man. The middle is the streetcar city's roll of 1902–03, which carries J. S. Myeski under the heading "Livery Barns" — the trade still boarding and hiring out horses two generations in. The end is the roll of 1921, and it is the directories' own category that tells the story: Andrew T. McDowell is listed under "Livery — Motor Car," and Samuel K. Finch's firm appears as the Finch Auto Livery — the livery name, and in McDowell's case the livery trade itself, filed by the directory under the automobile that was replacing the horse. After 1921 the word leaves the rolls' animal economy altogether. Against that full little arc, the pass ran the companion tests and prints them at the same directory strength: across the banked directory rolls from 1868 to 1949, no veterinarian appears — no veterinary surgeon, no horse doctor, no infirmary for animals — and no kennel appears either, no breeding or boarding establishment of record. A horse-powered city of Mishawaka's size certainly used veterinary skill; it presumably came from practitioners the directories classed otherwise, from South Bend, or from the farmers and liverymen themselves. The record reached does not name one, and in this section an unnamed practitioner is not printed as a found one.

Principal sources

1. The owners roster file in this record — the directory rolls of 1868 (C. E. Burt and F. Wilklow, Livery Stables), 1902–03 (J. S. Myeski, Livery Barns), and 1921 (Andrew T. McDowell, "Livery — Motor Car"; Finch Auto Livery); the veterinarian and kennel tests run across the same rolls, 1868–1949: none found.