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1860–1950 · THE WORKING ORDER OF THE TOWNSHIP
The county's wheat height is a frame number, and the township's replacement order is legible in its sketches: Chapman's agricultural chapter counts the county of 1879 at 811,037 bushels of wheat threshed — the wheat era at its peak, printed here at pointer size as South Bend's file carries the series whole. What Penn's farms ran on, as the sketches name the work, was the feed-and-stock system that succeeded wheat across the county: corn grown to be fed, cattle and hogs carried on it, the surplus stock walked or hauled to the depot dealer. Silvanus Hall of section 5 is "farmer and stock-raiser" (Chapman, p. 816); Aaron Hoover, "farmer and stock-raiser," retired January 1869 (p. 818); A. Newsbaum dealt livestock at the Osceola depot in the 1884 census (Businesses carries the trade); James McKnight "butchered in fall" (pp. 827–828) — slaughter as a farm service, the meat order before refrigeration. Edwin C. Laidlaw was "a thoroughbred-stock dealer for thirty years" (Howard, vol. 2, pp. 927–928) — the system's quality end, pedigree stock as a Penn Township trade of three decades. The system's inputs close the loop on the ground: the Crull brothers' general store sold "farm implements" beside its groceries (1916–17), the creamery (below) took the township's milk, and the marsh hay and the drained muck grew the specialty crops the next article carries. No herd count, milk-route roll, or stockyard figure for the township stands in any source; the system's presence is documented at the sketches' strength, its quantities are not, and the roll closes with that want named.
Sources:
- Chapman (1880), agricultural chapter (the 1879 county wheat figure, pointer), pp. 816, 818, 827–828; Howard (1907), vol. 2, pp. 927–928 (Edwin Laidlaw); Polk, 1884–85 and 1916–17 (the depot dealer; the implement trade).