The 1875 roll: what the atlas's directory says the village was

1875 · counted by method, transcribed where legible

The instrument: the 1875 atlas prints no Penn-only patrons' list; its directory is one combined roll — "St. Joseph County References — Mishawaka and Penn Township" (pp. 60, 66, 76, 82–84) — with columns for name, post office, section, business, nativity, and year settled in the county. The count must therefore be stated by method: 109 entries are fully legible in the transcription on pages 60, 76 and 84 and were counted name by name; two further pages (66 and 82–83) survive with their columns separated, their names largely lost, while their business and settlement columns enumerate roughly 93 further entries — the whole combined city-and-township roll stands at about 202, and no stronger count should be printed; the atlas page images are the settler for the exact figure and the lost names.

The Osceola post-office entries, transcribed whole — every legible entry whose post office is Osceola (once spelled "Oceola"), ten in number: Boles, James (sec. 16, farmer, Wayne Co., Ohio, settled 1853); Bancroft, Z. (sec. 16, flour mill, New York, settled 1834 as printed — the fourth Bancroft figure of the mills article); Griffitts, William (sec. 17, farmer, Burlington Co., New Jersey, 1846); Griffitts, Mrs. E. (sec. 8, housekeeper, Buchanan Co., Michigan, 1861); Leonard, Wesley (sec. 8, minister of the Gospel, Stark Co., Ohio, 1855 — the next article's man); Tell, S. P. (sec. 28, farmer, Union Co., Ohio, 1833); Weager, C. C. (farmer, Pennsylvania, 1855); Wilson, D. J. (sec. 9, farmer, Ohio, year lost); Wolf, John (sec. 21, farmer, Germany, 1857). One further Osceola post-office value survives on the scrambled pages against a name the transcription lost. What the roll says about the village in 1875 is as notable as what it lists: one flour mill, one minister, and farmers — no merchant, no physician, no blacksmith, and no postmaster is listed under the Osceola post office in the legible pages, although Chapman puts Plumb in business at Osceola from 1870 and Batchelder in practice there 1869–79; neither appears in the legible pages (Plumb may stand on a scrambled page; Batchelder's absence is unexplained), and the negative is printed at exactly that strength.

The township's sectioned names on the legible pages run with the sketches': Isaac Ghrist (sec. 1, settled 1853 — a Tamarack Methodist charter member in Chapman's church list), David and Joseph Hollingshead (secs. 23 and 5, 1832), Silvanus Hall (sec. 5, 1846), John Heiss (sec. 18, 1834), Aaron Jones (sec. 32), Paul and Joseph Judie (secs. 35 and 34, 1833), A. and John Laidlaw (secs. 29 and 35), Cornelius Smyser (sec. 25, 1854), Charles Sumstine (sec. 9, 1835), Daniel "Vrooman" (sec. 15), W. B. Vesey (sec. 24, 1848), Peter W. Ipes — "Blacksmithing," Mahoning County, Ohio, settled 1859, the one working blacksmith the Penn roll names outright — and a "Blacksmith and Wagon Maker," Andrew Taylor of Scotland, settled 1839, whose post-office cell the transcription lost: township placement probable, not provable from the text, flagged. The atlas also 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, evidence of who counted as patrons of standing in 1875.

Sources:

1. 1875 Atlas — directory pp. 60, 66, 76, 82–84 (count method as stated); biographies (Webster, Laidlaw, Moon); index of views.
2. Menzo Webster's atlas biography stands behind the settler lists: b. Monroe County, N.Y.; "in 1834 emigrated to St. Joseph county, Indiana, and settled in Penn township — 'The country was a wilderness, containing but a few settlers, with plenty of Indians and wild game.'"