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1834–1880 · storekeepers, bankers, the town's first family of business
For half a century the town's credit, its college and its water all ran through one family. J. H. Service was born in New York 15 November 1812, son of Philip and Clara (Hall) Service, came to New Carlisle at twenty-two, and "started in life as a poor boy": two years making brick, then thirty years keeping store in New Carlisle (except 1843–46 in Buchanan, Michigan), then, by 1880, four years in banking. Chapman calls him "one of the most influential men of the community," records that he represented the county one term in the state Legislature — and that he "usually declines public offices, preferring the energies of a business life." His public gifts mark the town's institutions: the $500 that started the Methodist college in 1859, the charter membership of Terre Coupee Lodge No. 204 in 1856, a seat on the township's war-aid committee in April 1861, and a son's generation to follow him. He married Sarah A. Flanegan in 1847. The Jeremiah Service House of 1860 at 302 East Michigan Street — "the Old Republic," listed on the National Register in 2000 — stands in the Architecture section's file.
His son George H. Service, born in the county in 1848, was by 1880 a banker, merchant and grain-dealer of a scale the prairie rarely produced: "last year (1879) he bought and shipped a million bushels of wheat," besides his store and his bank. When the town bonded its water-works in 1879 — $7,000 at seven per cent to a Vermont savings bank — it was George H. Service who insured the sale, and Chapman notes he was "recently very active in establishing the water-works of New Carlisle, and many of his opponents have since seen the wisdom of his course." The utilities leg's file carries the works; this section carries the man who sold the bonds.
Sources
- Chapman (1880), sketches of J. H. Service and George H. Service, pp. 783–784; Masonic and Institute matter, pp. 768, 770; war-aid committee, war chapter, p. 411.