The industrial fortunes, by sector

1834–1916 · EACH SIZED FROM A PUBLISHED SOURCE, OR PRINTED UNSIZED

Sector by sector, at the published-figure rule: land first, because on this ground land was the industry. Land and grain. The prairie holders, from Chapman's page 766, verbatim in its list: "John Reynolds, said to be the richest man in St. Joseph county; James Reynolds, Henry H. Clark and H. B. Ranstead, who, with Mr. John Reynolds, are the largest land-holders in the township... The Messrs. Reynolds, Clark and Ranstead all together own 7,433 acres of land" — Clark's own sketch gives him 1,500 acres alone, Ranstead's gives him 1,000 (700 of it farming land), and the grain trade's measure is George H. Service's: in 1879 he "bought and shipped a million bushels of wheat," besides his mercantile and banking business — a throughput figure, published in his sketch, and the largest single number in the leg. His father J. H. Service's fortune prints in his sketch's own words — he "accumulated a handsome fortune," kept store in New Carlisle thirty years, banked the last four of Chapman's telling, and sat one term in the Legislature: a fortune described, not numbered, and printed as described. Iron, wheels, hosiery, beer, meatpacking — the checklist's sector list prints against this ground as a finding: no iron fortune, no wheel works, no hosiery mill, no brewery and no packing house ever stood in New Carlisle in the record reached; the town's industrial fortunes are the grain, land and banking fortunes above and, a century later, the corporate steel of the businesses file, which made payrolls, not local fortunes. The sectors that do not exist are printed because a sector list with its empty sectors named is the only honest kind.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880), Olive Township chapter, pp. 766 and 772–783 — the wealth list verbatim; the Clark sketch (1,500 acres); the Ranstead sketch (1,000 acres); the Service sketches (the million bushels of 1879; the "handsome fortune"); read at the page for this section.
2. Notable People, nc-ppl-prairie-holders — the holders as carried, at Chapman's word.
3. The empty sectors: the searches of this section across the banked set, November 2026.