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1866 – into the twentieth century
The Cole Brothers' works, reincorporated in 1873 as the North Liberty Manufacturing Company, made wagons and buggies — and no automobile in any record reached. The businesses leg carries the firm whole: the planing mill of 1866, the fire of 1871 (and the paint-shop fire the Tribune records in November 1873), the rebuilding at the south end of town, the wagon-and-buggy product line that made the works the town's largest nineteenth-century employer class. The carriage-crossover test — the wagon firm that built an automobile — was run against exactly this firm, the only plausible candidate on the ground, and returns a negative: no Cole motor vehicle, prototype, marque or motor-buggy sideline appears in the record reached. The homebuilders' test returns the same: no car constructed in North Liberty by a named builder was found. The false-marque test completes the set: no "North Liberty" automobile, and no car trading on the town's name, exists in the marque registers as searched — negative, printed so the absence is documented rather than presumed.