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Folklore — North Liberty
Folklore is where a build is most tempted to invent. This section's discipline is the opposite: what the record proves and what it tells as story are printed separately, the legend carries its teller's own warning, the failed etymology is named as failed, and the leg closes on the measured state of the town's story-stock — one collector, one book, no copy anywhere the catalogues can see.
The naming of "North Liberty" — what the record proves, and what it tells as story
The name is on the plat of 1836/1837 (conflict C1); gap G-FR-7 stands open
What the record proves: Howard quotes the plat dedication itself — dated 12 January 1836, by Daniel Antrim, the plat surveyed by Tyra W. Bray — and the dedication as quoted recites no naming statement. The town's own About page…
Potato Creek's name — the legend, printed as legend, with its tellers
Undated; the creek's name predates the town
The legend, as told. Indiana's own tourism carrier (visitindiana.in.gov, updated 2023) tells it hedged in its own words: "As the story goes (and this might be apocryphal, so take it with a grain of salt), the Potawatomi collected…
The unnamed Indian trail — lore vs. record
Before settlement; the record is Chapman's (1880)
Chapman records exactly one thing: an unnamed Indian trail crossed the township. No name, route, or endpoints are given, and Howard's roads section carries no North Liberty–specific road material — the Michigan Road does not pass through the town. Lore and record coincide in their thinness here: the trail is real in the record and anonymous in both. It is printed unnamed, because that is how the record holds it (the before-the-city file carries the same trail at work-route strength). Any named-trail telling for this township would be growth beyond the record, and none was found. Settler: the GLO field notes for T36N R1E (gap G-LD-2).
The old-settlers' stock — the best stories the Liberty chapter actually tells
1830s–1880, as told by Chapman (1880) and Shultz (1952)
The week at the mill. Before the town's 1837 gristmill existed, settlers went to Elkhart to get grain ground, waiting nearly a week for it (Chapman, Liberty chapter) — the chapter's signature hardship anecdote, the story that…
Gaylord Saltzgaber's Genesis of North Liberty (1978) — the keeper and the missing book
Published, by its only attestation, in 1978; location unproven (gap G-SP-3)
The town's collected stock — the one book that would settle the naming story, the millpond date, the fire depth, and half the gaps in this build — exists by citation and cannot be produced. Gaylord Saltzgaber, Genesis of North…
The Pokagon legend book — pointer only
The valley's book, carried whole elsewhere
The Indigenous-authored legend book of the St. Joseph valley — Simon Pokagon's writings — is the valley's and South Bend's file, which carries it whole. One pointer line here, no duplication.