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1853–1880 · CHAPMAN FIRST-HAND
The first protection institution on this ground was a mutual company with riders for constables. Chapman records the Terre Coupee Anti-Horse-Thief Association, organized in 1853 or 1854 "for the purpose of protecting the property of its members against the depredations of thieves," reorganized after its twenty-year charter expired "on the plan of a mutual insurance company": it paid two-thirds value for a stolen horse not recovered in thirty days, its membership stood at 120 in 1880, each rider was "authorized to act as constable for the purposes of the association by a State law," and in twenty-five years fewer than thirty horses had been stolen inside its jurisdiction and all but two recovered. Its territory, at first unlimited, had contracted by 1880 to Olive and Wills townships in St. Joseph County and Hudson Township in La Porte County — the same three-unit ground, in outline, that the fire territory would formalize in 2020. First officers: H. Reid, president; T. L. Borden, secretary; T. J. Garoutte, treasurer. The town's constable and early marshal succession before the ordinance record opens is a named gap (GAP-NC3-FIRE-1), settler the town's minute books and the county histories' later editions.
Sources:
- Chapman (1880), Olive Township chapter, pp. 769–770: the Anti-Horse-Thief Association whole. Read first-hand.