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1871 – present; 1892 – present
The undertaking trade's first holder in town is a man no carrier names. George A. Bettcher arrived in 1871 to assist his father-in-law's furniture-and-undertaking business — the father-in-law, the trade's true first holder here, named by no carrier reached, a gap inside the trade's first line. The course then runs whole: Bettcher himself (atlas 1875; patrons list c.1886); P. S. Burkhart in parallel (atlas 1875; patrons list) — two undertaking shops in one small town in 1875; Jeremiah Steel [Steele], furniture, across the 1880s gazetteers, with the atlas's farming-and-saw-milling Jeremiah Steele unmerged; J. F. Johnson, furniture (1884–85 only); J. W. Kring, undertaker without furniture (1880–81, 1882–83) — the trade's first specialist listing; Louis G. Finch & Company, furniture in the Finch Block (1909, 1917), undertaking not stated for Finch; and Kilmer, furniture and undertaker (1916–17), the same firm running the Finch Block hardware store — the pairing's last directory form in town. Then the record gap, printed as a record gap and not a trade gap: from 1917 to 1967 no undertaker or funeral home is named in the 1940 directory transcription or any other carrier reached — the trade is present in any living town and absent from this record for fifty years. The modern line stands whole in the businesses file: Kent R. Palmer (mortuary class of 1958; the North Liberty house attested by 1967 as his; died 2006), the multi-chapel company, his sons' co-ownership, and the present house at 202 North Main. The succession verdict prints plainly: whether Palmer succeeded any earlier practice here is stated by no carrier — Q-12 above is the trade's open file.
Printers, as a trade, print at pointer size by design — the papers' plants are a later pass's whole course. The business skeleton: the North Liberty Herald (1892 to c.1896; its founder-printer named by no carrier reached, standing work carried from the sources pass; its plant address in the conflict reserved to the media pass — 139 North Main in this build's brief, 137 in the nomination, the only printing establishment on the 1909 and 1917 Sanborns, its presses run by a gasoline-powered two-horsepower engine, and the people leg prints the News office at 137 North Main); the North Liberty News (1895–1962; Woodward, then De Coudres, then the Independent News Company by 1940); and a third paper, the North West Indianian (c.1903), at Howard's pointer. The job-printing line — the trade's other work — has exactly one carrier: the 1967 advertisement "Independent-News Co. Inc., Printers & Publishers — 'All Kinds of Commercial Printing'" answering a North Liberty telephone number five years after the News ended as a standalone paper. No job-printing-only shop, named pressman, or commercial-work customer stands in any carrier reached. The trade's present-day echo at directory strength: AJ Screen Printing, 122 South State Street (town links) — a printing firm on the present list, no person named.