The named farms: the atlas's five views and the great holdings of the sketches

1875–1907 · THE FARMS THEMSELVES

The record names this township's farms the way the nineteenth century named them — by their owners, in biographical sketches, with acreages that sometimes disagree: the 1875 atlas sold five of these men lithographed farm views — John Boles, John Laidlaw, Adam Miller, Jacob Minnick and Daniel Vrooman stand in its index of views — and the views are the period's own roll of standing: the farms a subscription atlas's patrons paid to have pictured are the farms that counted in 1875. The index fact is this build's (People carries it); the farms themselves are this section's. John Boles of section 17 farmed 140 acres, a carpenter for eighteen years before and between (Chapman, pp. 802–803). John Laidlaw's holding carries this section's acreage conflict whole: Chapman gives the Scot of 1836 — arrived with $175, married Sally Shaw, thirteen children — 610 acres besides town property, residing in Mishawaka; Howard's sketch of his son Edwin gives the journey on foot, the 1834 entry of eighty acres in Penn, 580 acres accumulated from $50, Sarah Shaw, twelve children; the 1875 atlas's own Laidlaw biography sides with Chapman on arrival and family. Both versions stand unmerged, as People prints them; the farm that concerns this section is the same under either arithmetic — the township's most documented great holding, worked by a family whose second generation (Alexander, section 29, 110 acres; Edwin, 150 acres kept after dividing land among his children, with the thoroughbred-stock dealing and the steam thresher the mechanisation article carries) kept it in the record to 1907. Adam Miller farmed section 25 (Chapman, p. 828). Jacob Minnick, who had "worked by the month at $7, harvest days at 50 cents," removed in 1849 to section 33 and held 170 acres with 60 more given to a son (pp. 828–829) — the wage figures are the township's farm-labour price of the settlement generation, printed as the sketch gives them. Daniel Vrooman, a molder by trade, farmed section 17 in Chapman and section 15 in the directory — flagged in People, not resolved here.

The holdings roll continues at the sketches' strength: John McKnight entered about 600 acres (section 11; the homestead to his son Milton, 267 acres to his son James); Christian Weis held 385 acres and his son Henry farmed section 28 (Chapman, pp. 840–841); Jacob Eby, section 4, 282 acres (p. 809); Elom Eller, section 29, 250 acres (p. 810); George E. Moon, 240 acres (Howard); Charles K. Pulling, section 8, 235 acres (Chapman, p. 834 — the Charles/Cyrus flag of People rides with the name); George V. Byrkit, section 14, 216 acres; Philip Manchester, section 4, 201 acres; Robert H. Crooks, section 28, 200 acres, with "a $1,200 barn and a $2,000 house" — the township's farm-improvement prices of 1880 stated in one sketch (p. 807); John Monroe, section 6, 180 acres; the Meixells, 150 acres; Samuel Judie, section 12, 130 acres; Edwin Curtis, section 21, 120 acres; Samuel Ritter, 116 acres "at $100 the acre" — the township's land price in a settler's own valuation (pp. 835–836); Alex. Curtis, section 29, 90 acres; Henry Burket, section 32, 90 acres. Read as a roll, the sketches describe a township of substantial family farms — ninety to six hundred acres, the median holding near two hundred — with its labour hired at harvest wages and its improvements priced like its land. No farm of the roll is traced past its sketch; the plat books and the Tribune's farm reporting are the settlers for the twentieth-century course of any one of them, and the Eberhart Farm — Moat's Prairie's successor, the one named farm of the town history's telling — stands in the closing roll as its own gap, its course from the Eberhart brothers of the sketches (Chapman, pp. 808–809) unreached beyond them.

Sources:

1. Higgins, Belden & Co., Atlas of St. Joseph County (1875), index of views (the five farms) (imprint conformed at assembly — the banked fragment's Andreas & Baskin is the error; the title page governs; Sources, whole); Chapman (1880), Penn Township biographical sketches, pp. 802–841, and Howard (1907), vol. 2 — all as carried whole, with their conflicts, in this build's People leg.