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LEG 27 · ITEM 6 · RUN B #133 · THE NAVARRE CABIN TEST
The founding object of the county's collecting is a cabin, and it has been collected, moved and collected again for a hundred and thirty years: the Navarre Cabin, built about 1820 by Pierre Freischutz Navarre — the first settler of European descent in St. Joseph County — on the north bank of the St. Joseph River at what is now 123 West North Shore Drive, South Bend. When the cabin's ground was bought for residential development, the developers donated the cabin to the Northern Indiana Historical Society in May 1895 — the refounding year itself (item 1), so that the county's oldest structure became the refounded society's founding possession. The society moved it in 1904 to Leeper Park, and within the park again in 1916 and 1954; the visitors bureau carries it as the oldest structure in St. Joseph County, its original timbers substantially surviving under repaired roof and windows. On 15 May 2024 the cabin was towed through downtown South Bend to The History Museum's campus, the centerpiece of a planned Navarre Homestead — its fifth seat, and the first that puts the founding object on the museum's own ground.
At this ground's size the test's answer is a boundary with a local edge: Osceola's collecting holds no rival founding object — the town society's collection (item 1) is uncatalogued in any public record, so no oldest possession can be named for it — and the cabin's own valley is Osceola's too: Navarre's river is the river at the town's north edge, though the cabin never stood in Penn Township and is not claimed for it.
Verdict, item 6 — DUG (boundary size; the Osceola-side absence printed).
Sources: The History Museum, "The Navarre Cabin" (historymuseumsb.org) — donation May 1895, moves of 1904, and the homestead plan; Visit South Bend Mishawaka ("oldest structure in St. Joseph County"; relocated 2024); South Bend Tribune photographs, 15 May 2024; Leeper Park National Register district record. Searches run 11 Nov 2026.