The longest-lived house, and the keepers' test

1853 — 1951

The test, stated: South Bend's form of survival was the keepers' brewery — the South Bend Brewing Association of 1903, organized by the city's saloon keepers to make their own beer, which stands in that city's build in full. The checklist question for Mishawaka is whether its keepers ever did the same, and the answer in the record reached is no: no association of Mishawaka saloon keepers owning a brewery appears in the gazetteers, the directories, the city history, or the trade record. Mishawaka's keepers bought their beer — increasingly, from the one house in town. The city's answer to the survival question was not association but endurance.

The finding: Kamm & Schellinger is the longest-lived brewing house of the two cities' record. On the ground from 1853 (and in its founder's operation from 1839) to the close of 1951, it outlasted Muessel as a family brewery — South Bend's house passed to Drewry's of Winnipeg in 1936, its family brewing done by about 1922 — and it outlasted the keepers' association itself, which closed in 1950, a year before it. Of the three breweries in the Muessel nomination's frame, Mishawaka's is the one that began first and ended last, and the only one that was never sold to an outside brewer in its life. Its full run — Wagner, Dick & Kamm, the partnership, the corporation, the dry conversion, the second brewing, the end — is the Story of Mishawaka section of this section, and it stands in the entries around this one rather than being retold here.

Sources:

1. National Register nomination, Muessel/Drewry's Brewery Historic District (2000), as carried in the South Bend build — the three-brewery frame (Muessel; Kamm & Schellinger; the South Bend Brewing Association of 1903).
2. South Bend build, Wineries & Distilleries leg — the Brewing Association organized June 1903 by German, Polish and Hungarian saloon keepers, closed 1950; the Muessel family's brewing to about 1922 and the Drewry's purchase of 1936. Carried here at pointer size as the comparison's terms.
3. R. L. Polk & Co., Indiana State Gazetteers of 1880–81 and 1884–85, Mishawaka listings, read first-hand for the Bars & Nightclubs leg — the town's saloon keepers named man by man; the brewery entered as the town's one brewery; no keepers' association in either edition.