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1839 — 1853
The question, and the man who answers both halves of it: Asked who Mishawaka's first brewer was, the record this section reached gives one name, and it gives him a second trade beside the first. Peter J. De Kever's history of the city, commissioned by Mishawaka itself, traces the Kamm & Schellinger company's origins to "John Wagner, who had operated a brewery and distillery in town since 1839." No earlier brewer — and no earlier distiller — appears in any source this section reached: not in the county histories' Mishawaka chapters, not in the register text for the plant, not in the city history's own account of the iron-works village of the 1830s, whose industry it opens with the St. Joseph Iron Company. The statement stands at that strength and no stronger: on the record reached, commercial brewing and commercial distilling in Mishawaka both begin with John Wagner, in 1839, and a predecessor would have to be found in the settling records named at this entry's end.
The three datings, weighed: Wagner's start is carried three ways in the record, and the three are not the same claim. De Kever's 1839 is a claim about the man's operation — a brewery and distillery running in the town from that year. The period company account carried in the National Register text dates "the establishment" to 1850 and calls it "a small and primitive plant." The Indiana Historical Bureau's marker and the register nomination date the fabric: "First structures built 1853." Read together without forcing them, the datings describe one course — a maker at work from 1839, an establishment the company later dated to 1850, and the surviving plant begun in 1853 — and the event that joins the second dating to the third is in De Kever: "After his business burned in 1851, he relocated to North Center Street two years later." The fire of 1851 is the hinge of this section: whatever Wagner made before it stood somewhere the record does not locate, and everything after it stood on the North Center Street ground the brewery never left. This section prints all three datings wherever the founding is stated, each with its carrier.
The corroborating frame: De Kever's narrative of the 1840s lists the young town's manufacturers as "a distillery, blast furnace and machine shop, sawmill, flour mill, and keelboat and steamboat builders" beside the iron company's works — a distillery among the industries of a town of some fourteen hundred people, unnamed in that passage and named in his brewery passage as Wagner's. George Merrifield's inventory of the town in 1859, written for the Enterprise and carried by De Kever, lists among the businesses "a brewery" — Wagner's rebuilt plant, six years on its new ground — and no distillery, the first sign of the silence the distillers' entry below takes up. The plant Merrifield counted is the one whose fabric the register describes: the original Brewery Building of 1853, a four-story brick building with additions of about 1870 and 1875; a Stable Building of about 1855; and a Boiler House of about 1870 carrying a 262-foot brick chimney — the stack that still marks the ground.
The settling records, named: Wagner's distillery — what it made, at what scale, and whether the still ran beside the kettles until the 1870 sale — is the leg's first open question, and its settling sources are specific: the United States Census of Manufactures schedules for St. Joseph County in 1850 and 1860, which enumerate a maker's products and values establishment by establishment; the federal Internal Revenue registers of distillers, at the National Archives; and the Mishawaka Enterprise run, which begins in the 1850s with Merrifield himself at the inventory. Until one of them is read, the distillery stands at De Kever's one sentence, and it is printed at exactly that size.
Sources:
- Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History, the city-commissioned history (City of Mishawaka), read first-hand — Wagner operating "a brewery and distillery in town since 1839"; the fire of 1851 and the relocation to North Center Street two years later; the 1840s manufacturers' list naming a distillery among the town's industries; George Merrifield's 1859 inventory for the Enterprise, listing a brewery and no distillery.
- National Register of Historic Places record for the Kamm and Schellinger Brewery, 100 Center Street (reference 79000042, listed 11 October 1979), and the period company account carried at historic-structures.com — the establishment dated 1850 under John Wagner, "a small and primitive plant"; the Brewery Building of 1853 with additions of about 1870 and 1875, the Stable Building of about 1855, the Boiler House of about 1870 with its 262-foot chimney.
- Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.1995.1, "Kamm & Schellinger Brewery" (erected 1995) — "First structures built 1853."