The union and the company: Dick & Kamm, the partnership of 1879/1880, and an incorporation carried two ways

1870 — 1887

The purchase: In 1870 John Wagner sold his interest in the brewery to Clemens Dick and Adolph Kamm — De Kever's phrasing, "Wagner sold his interest," keeps the founder in the transaction the company account tells as a purchase — and the firm of Dick & Kamm "immediately enlarged and improved the plant," in the account's words, and "commenced the manufacture of a superior quality of beer which at once became popular and increased in demand." The additions the register dates to about 1870 and 1875 on the Brewery Building are that enlargement in brick.

The union, dated two ways: A decade on, Dick disposed of his interest and Kamm took in his brother-in-law. The company account dates Schellinger's succession to 1880; the brewery-trade timeline enters "Kamm & Schellinger" from 1879. Both datings are printed, here and wherever the union is stated in this section: 1879 on the trade timeline, 1880 on the company's own telling, the partnership a fact in either year.

The incorporation, carried two ways and weighed: The record gives the company's incorporation twice, and this section prints the conflict whole because the carriers divide by kind. The Indiana Historical Bureau's marker and the period company account date the incorporation to 1883, the account adding the substance: capital of $65,000, Adolph Kamm president, Nicholas Schellinger treasurer, and the president's daughter Laura Kamm secretary — a woman in the corporate record of an Indiana brewery in 1883. Against that, three carriers say 1887. De Kever's city history dates the incorporation to 1887 outright. The trade timeline styles the house "Kamm & Schellinger Brewing Co." only from 1887, carrying it as a partnership before. And the Michigan Supreme Court, in the company's own litigated case of 1912, recites from its articles that the plaintiff "is, and since March, 1887, has been, a corporation organized and existing under the laws of Indiana, the business of which corporation is described in its articles to be the manufacture and sale of beer and malt, to be carried on in the town of Mishawaka." A court reading the articles is the strongest carrier a corporate date can have, and this section ranks it first: the corporation of record dates from March 1887. The 1883 date stands as the marker's and the company's own account gives it — whether it preserves an earlier organization the articles replaced, or an error the marker copied, the record reached does not say, and the file does not guess. The officers and the $65,000 capital are printed from the company account at their face, undated by this section to either year.

The plant the company built: The expansions the marker summarizes as "late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries" are itemized across the carriers: the Boiler House of about 1870, built to supply steam and power, its 262-foot chimney the plant's signature; an ice house and a carriage house in the modernization De Kever lists with the incorporation; the Ice House later converted to a restaurant in the complex's afterlife; a windowless red-brick building of about 1910 standing to the north in the register's description; and a one-story building of about 1920 to the east. The addresses the record gives the plant run West 2nd Street in the trade timeline's early entries, North Center in the 1921 directory and in the post-Repeal company's styling, and 100 Center Street today — one ground at the Center Street riverfront, addressed as the streets around it were named and renamed.

Sources:

1. The period company account carried at historic-structures.com — the 1870 purchase and enlargement; Dick's disposal of his interest in 1880 and the association with Nicholas Schellinger; incorporation dated 1883 with capital of $65,000, Adolph Kamm president, Nicholas Schellinger treasurer, Laura Kamm secretary.
2. Kamm & Schellinger Brewing Co. v. St. Joseph County Village Fire Insurance Co., Michigan Supreme Court, 1912 (opinion read first-hand) — the corporation "since March, 1887," its articles' business "the manufacture and sale of beer and malt, to be carried on in the town of Mishawaka."
3. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — Wagner's sale of his interest in 1870; the Dick & Kamm Brewery; the incorporation dated 1887; the boiler house, ice house and carriage house among the additions.
4. Tavern Trove, brewery record — the timeline: 1870 F. Dick Sr. & Co.; 1879 Kamm & Schellinger; 1887 Kamm & Schellinger Brewing Co.; West 2nd Street for the early plant, North Center Street for the company of 1933.
5. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.1995.1 — "Incorporated in 1883"; expansions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
6. National Register record (79000042) and the register description carried at historic-structures.com — the Boiler House of about 1870; the Ice House and its restaurant conversion; the buildings of about 1910 and about 1920.