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12 January 1836 · 1837 — conflict printed whole
The town was laid out on the Antrim ground at the corner of four sections — in 1836 by the dedication Howard prints, in 1837 by Chapman's account. Howard prints the dedication itself: "This is the plat of the Town of North Liberty, in St. Joseph county, Indiana. Laid out on the southwest quarter of section twenty-eight and the southeast quarter of section twenty-nine, in township thirty-six north, in range one east… Laid out for the purposes above mentioned, as witness my hand, this 12th day of January, 1836. DANIEL ANTRIM." The dedication's own particulars: the corner of sections 28, 29, 32 and 33 is the beginning point; streets run 66 feet wide except Main Street at 82½ feet; alleys run 16½ feet north–south and 14 feet east–west; each lot is ten rods east and west by four rods north and south, a quarter of an acre. The surveyor was Tyra W. Bray, county surveyor — the one element on which every carrier agrees. Against the dedication's single signer and 1836 date, Howard's own township chapter says the town "was laid out January 12, 1836, by Daniel Antrim and James P. Antrim," and Chapman says, flatly, "It was laid out in 1837 by Daniel and James P. Antrim… No houses had yet been built on the site." The modern carriers divide the same way: the town's official site and the body text of its 2015 Comprehensive Plan say "established on January 12, 1836, by Daniel Antrim," while the National Park Service's nomination for the Commercial Historic District — and the same plan, quoting it — say "platted in 1837." One more reading stands in the record: the 1875 county atlas's town list, as its degraded text was reached, dates the laying-out 12 January 1836 but keys the town to "section 32, R. 1 E., T. 36 N." — against the dedication's sections 28 and 29; it prints as reached, uncorrected, its likeliest explanation being that the atlas keyed the town to its beginning-corner section. No addition to the original plat is named for North Liberty in either county history — Howard names additions for other towns in the same chapters and none for this one — and the town's additions, if any were recorded, stand as a named gap whose settler is the county Recorder's plat books and the plat map printed at page 40 of the 1875 atlas. Why the town is called North Liberty, no source consulted states: neither county history gives a name origin, and a 1991 column in the town's own newspaper column asked the question in print — "But what I want to know, is how North Liberty got its name" — without a carried answer. The town's own history volume, named in the sources section, is the settler.