The plat of 1835 and the promotion plat of 1837

15 August 1835 · 15 March 1837

Richard Carlisle platted the town and gave it his own name. So Howard prints it, and no source found ties the name to Carlisle, Pennsylvania; the Pennsylvania derivation is not asserted anywhere in this build. The founder's name itself prints three ways in the record — Richard R. Carlisle in Howard and in the plat's own signature, Richard P. Carlisle in Chapman, and Richard Risley Carlisle in the modern accounts, which identify him as the celebrated acrobat and gymnast "Prof. Risley." Howard's description governs at book strength: "a sportsman and a traveler rather than a pioneer settler. He did not remain in the town to which he gave his name, and is said to have spent his last days in Philadelphia." The plat dedication, quoted whole by Howard from the record, fixes the town's legal ground: "This plat represents the Town of New Carlisle, situated in the northeast quarter of section thirty-four, in township thirty-eight north, in range one west, in St. Joseph county, Indiana. Each lot is one hundred and thirty-two feet in length by fifty feet in width. All the streets and alleys cross at right angles — variation north eight degrees and twenty minutes west." Michigan street is shown one hundred feet in width; Front, Chestnut, Cherry, Filbert, Arch and Race streets sixty feet each; the alleys sixteen and one-half or eight feet. The plat is signed "Richard R. Carlisle, Proprietor," carries its own re-survey point — "a stone at the northeast corner of No. thirty-three" — and was surveyed by Tyra W. Bray, St. Joseph County Surveyor. Carlisle acknowledged the plat on 15 August 1835. On 15 March 1837 he filed and acknowledged a very much extended plat on the same plan, "printed and lithographed in the city of New York, and contains a beautiful view of the town overlooking Terre Coupee prairie" — an instrument prepared in numbers to circulate in the East and attract settlers: the speculation era's paper, printed at the town's founding.