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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 prints the same founding line as the town's own claim: "North Liberty was established on January 12, 1836 by Daniel Antrim." Chapman and Howard, both read whole for the Liberty sections, tell no naming story at all — no anecdote, no contest, no explanation. What is told as story: nothing in the reached record. No naming anecdote, naming contest, or losing-names story was found for this town — a sharp contrast with South Bend's naming rumpus, and printed as the folklore result it is. The natural inference — that the town took the township's name, Liberty — is an inference, never an assertion, and the reached chronology cuts against the simple telling: the township was formed by county-board order on 2 May 1837, after the 1836 plat date Howard prints, though before the 1837 plat date of the other half of C1. With C1 unresolved, the direction of the naming is unproven either way. G-FR-7 (the name's origin) stands open; its settlers are Saltzgaber's Genesis if located, the recorded plat dedication in the County Recorder's plat books, and the North Liberty entries in Baker's From Needmore to Prosperity (1995) and Baker & Carmony's Indiana Place Names (1975) — both identified exactly, their entries not reached, standing as settlers and not as evidence.