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Swept November 2026, printed at true return
Women owners were swept explicitly, and the whole return is ten linkages. The findings and every carrier behind them — the 1875 atlas directory's business column read whole, the Polk town lists of 1880–81, 1882–83, 1884–85, and 1916–17, the c.1886 patrons list, the 1940 directory, the 1967 advertisements, the town links page, the firms' own pages — were read with women proprietors specifically in mind. The return: Magdalena Rupert (Empire Hotel, 1875), Mrs J. J. Garrard (milliner, 1880–81), Lydia Swank (milliner, 1882–83), Lavina Moak (drugs, 1916–17 to 1940), Flora Houser (milliner, 1916–17), Martha Phelps (carpet weaver, 1916–17), Eldora (beauty shop, 1940), Judy (beauty salon, 1967 to present), Josephine Marek (co-proprietor, Shamrock Inn, 1967), and Mary (beauty salon, 1967, ad strength). The pattern prints without padding: women hold the record in the hotel (1875), the millinery line whole (1880–1917), one drug store (1916–1940), the cottage carpet trade, and the beauty trade whole (1940 to present) — and in no manufacturing, banking, grain, or auto firm on any carrier reached. (The plant manager and the attorney in band 7 are a manager at a national firm's plant and a present-day professional listing; neither is counted in this historic return, and both stand in the roster on their own carriers.) A thin return, printed as a thin return.
Black owners were swept explicitly over the same files and carriers, including the directory occupation columns and the classified lists. The return is zero named linkages: no carrier reached names a Black business owner, partner, officer, or manager for North Liberty or Liberty Township, and no carrier reached prints a race descriptor for any proprietor in this roster. That prints as a search-strength negative over the carriers named — not as a claim that no Black proprietor ever traded in the township: the directories read are point samples, the town's newspaper run (the settler class for small-trade proprietors) is unread, and the census manuscripts were not swept for this section. The settler classes are named in the gaps file's closer.
Names that do not enter the roster, printed so the exclusions are auditable: Joseph O. Cole (farming only, 1875); George Waldsmith (farming only in the atlas; the 1837 gristmill-builder claim is single-carrier unproven and stands as a conflict, not a linkage); Martin and Newton Finch (farming from 1849; the Finch firms enter on their own carriers in bands 3–4); C. F. Keck (postmaster — a public office, not a firm); the Community State Bank's 1943 founders and officers (not found); Bettcher's unnamed father-in-law, the furniture-and-undertaking trade's true first holder in town (named by no carrier — he stands in the gaps file, inside the trade's first line); and every present-day firm carrying no personal name.