The Irelands: first justices, a rival plat, and a memoir that will not sign its author

1831 – 1880

The family on every list: the Irelands stand on all three first-settler lists. Alpheus Ireland was among the township's first justices of the peace at the first election in 1832. John and William Ireland stand in Howard's and the atlas's rolls. William Ireland is, on Howard's record, the proprietor of the Canton plat of 1835 on Baugo Creek, and, on the town page's quotation of the "Memories," the builder of the creek's first saw mill in 1833 — his two appearances frame the mills conflict in the article above, and he is carried there and here as the same William Ireland only where the sources themselves place him in Penn Township on the same creek in the same years; the mill claim itself rests on the "Memories" alone.

S. I. H. Ireland (Chapman, p. 819): born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, 28 June 1807, son of Andrew and Elizabeth Ireland; the family removed in 1816 to Preble County, Ohio, where his father died in 1822; he married Sally Ireland in 1828 (five children, two living, Mary and Clarissa), came to this county in 1831, farmed until 1851, then sold for the St. Joseph Iron Company and auctioneered; of the Christian Church at Mishawaka. The open identification, flagged and not made: the town history's quoted settler memoir is Samuel Ireland's "Memories of Penn Township." Whether Chapman's S. I. H. Ireland is that Samuel Ireland is plausible and is stated in neither source; the two are not merged in this section, and the identification stands in the closing register as the single most valuable open question in this band, because the "Memories" carries the William Ireland mill claim.

Sources:

1. Chapman, pp. 790, 819; Howard, vol. 1, p. 294 and Ch. IX (Canton); 1875 Atlas, p. 89; [TOWN] (the "Memories" quotations).