Cole Brothers' planing mill → the North Liberty Manufacturing Company, 1866 – into the 20th century

1866 – into the 20th century; end date not carried

The town's flagship maker began as Cole Brothers' planing mill and outlived its founders' name. "Cole Brothers built a large planing mill and manufacturing facility in 1866" at North Liberty; it burned in 1871 and was reincorporated in 1873 as the North Liberty Manufacturing Company, which manufactured wagons and buggies and "continued into the 20th century" — the fullest course any carrier reached prints, and no end date is given by any carrier reached. Which Coles founded it is answered at officer strength by the 1875 atlas directory, read whole: the directory lists four Cole men, all of Darke County, Ohio, all settled in the county in 1836 — Isaac R. Cole, "Vice President North Liberty Manufacturing Co."; D. C. Cole, "Superintendent North Liberty Manufacturing Co."; M. R. Cole, "Grocery and Produce Business," the town grocer of the gazetteer listings; and Joseph O. Cole, farming. The company's 1875 officer slate whole: President, L. J. Knepp ("President North Liberty Manufacturing Co.," settled 1857 — Levi J. Knepp, a justice of the peace in the 1880s gazetteers); Vice President, Isaac R. Cole; Superintendent, D. C. Cole; Secretary and Treasurer, Daniel W. Houser (settled 1858). By 1875, then, the presidency had already passed outside the Cole family while two Coles held the vice-presidency and the superintendency. That the founding brothers of 1866 were of this Darke County set is the record's plain shape, but no carrier reached names the 1866 founders individually, and the identification of Isaac R. and D. C. Cole as the founders prints here as inference, not as a carrier's statement. The 1875 atlas carries a view — an engraving — of the company, the build's image roll NL-IMG-7. Beside the corporation stands the principals' own mill firm: Knepp & Houser, listed by Polk as a saw mill in 1880–81 and a saw and planing mill in 1882–83 and 1884–85; whether that planing mill and the Manufacturing Company's plant are one plant under two names is stated by no carrier reached, and Polk's separate 1880–81 listing of "Coel Bros, Saw Mill" [sic] — the Cole Brothers under a transcription garble, or a distinct sawmill — is likewise unresolved; both print as conflicts. The company's incorporation record, its markets, its peak, and its end stand as a named gap: the settlers are the Indiana corporation filings of 1873, Chapman's Liberty biographies at page-image strength, and the North Liberty News's advertising columns on the Walkerton microfilm. (The wagon company's market reach, or lack of a stated one, prints in the exports leg.)

A cross-finding from this build's own people leg prints beside the nomination's account, at Chapman strength and unmerged with it: the people register's firm entry for the Cole Brothers, drawn from Chapman's narrative and biographies (pp. 719–720), carries the 1873 step in a partnership form — "Cole, Ragon & Co. formed 1 Jan. 1873 built the North Liberty manu[facturing works]" — and a Chapman biography in the same pages names a partner in "Cole, Ragon & Co. / Houser & Knepp," the principals' mill firm in the reverse name order from Polk's "Knepp & Houser." The Ragon surname in Chapman's form also stands beside the atlas directory's garbled "Hagon [Ragon?]" among the Home Manufacturing Company's officers in the next article. Whether Cole, Ragon & Co. is the reincorporation's vehicle, a predecessor partnership of the same winter, or Chapman's compression of the two is not stated by any carrier reached; both forms stand.