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The trades whole II: ice (a tested negative), coal, laundries

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Tested November 2026; the laundry course 1960 – present absence

The ice trade was tested on every carrier read, and it is not there. No ice dealer, ice harvester, ice house, or ice delivery firm is named for North Liberty or Liberty Township in the 1875 atlas directory's business column read whole, the Polk town lists of 1880–81, 1882–83, 1884–85, and 1916–17, Chapman's 1880 census, the 1940 directory transcription, the 1967 advertisements, or the town links page. Potato Creek ice is not named in any carrier reached — Karst's Potato Creek history, the natural carrier for a creek-ice harvest, is itself unreached. The millpond on Potato Creek (drained mid-1880s) is the kind of water a harvest would have used, and that sentence is context, not evidence; no carrier ties a harvest to it. The trade prints as NOT FOUND, with its settlers named: the Polk classified Ice Dealers headings in the editions read (the town lists were read whole; the state classified lists were read only for the headings the brewing and farms work read — the sweep article below states the limit plainly), the Sanborn sheets (an ice house is drawn and labelled), and the News's winter advertising record. A town of this size in this climate had ice from somewhere; this record does not say from whom, and the file does not invent a dealer.

Coal's whole reachable record is one firm name and one adjacency: the North Liberty Lumber & Coal Co. (Polk 1916–17, name only — no officer, manager, or yard address in any carrier). No standalone coal dealer, coal yard, or coal-and-wood firm is named in the 1875 atlas, the 1880s gazetteers, the 1940 directory, or the 1967 advertisements. The fuel trade's later form in town is petroleum — Hazelbaker's Phillips 66 (1940), the Lonzo Oil Company jobber (1967), the 1967 filling-station bench in the businesses file — printed as the trade's succession at directory strength, not as any coal firm's succession; and its present directory form is Ashland Propane dba JSD Ventures LLC, 791 Industrial Parkway, listed "Coming Soon" (town links). Settler for the coal yard's people: the 1917 and 1929 Sanborns — a lumber-and-coal yard's sheds and siding are drawn — and the News. Laundries have exactly one attested era in town: before 1960 no laundry, wash house, or hand laundry is named in any carrier read (the 1940 absence the most telling, that directory naming twenty-one-plus Main Street businesses); in 1960 the Modern Speed Wash rose at 103 West Center — built by Modern Electric on the News item "New Building to House Laundry," opened before year-end, grand opening 2 January 1961, its operator named by no carrier (Q-5 above); an unnamed 24-hour coin laundry and dry-cleaning advertisement in 1967 is the Speed Wash's operation six years on, probable and not proven; the lot's ground runs livery (c.1905) to Ford garage to wash to the present Country Taco; and no laundry or dry cleaner stands on the current town links list — the trade that arrived in 1960 has no present-day successor on that carrier.

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Using this page? Copy a credit line. Last updated November 12, 2026.

Source: The trades whole II: ice (a tested negative), coal, laundries, Moosed History by Project Moosed, https://history.projectmoosed.com/usa/midwest/indiana/north-liberty/more-businesses/trades-whole-ii-ice-a-tested-negative-coal-laundries/