The professions test: physicians in succession, and three empty chairs

Physicians — a succession, dug: the village's medical line stands at four names across sixty years. Dr. Stephen J. Batchelder (b. Clinton County, N.Y., 21 November 1833) — a saw crippled his hand in an Iowa saw-mill and turned him to medicine; graduated Keokuk College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1856; came to Osceola in March 1869 and practiced ten years (one year in California excepted) before removing to Mishawaka in April 1879. Dr. W. A. Pierce "of Osceola" stands in the 1893 Goodspeed memoirs at a single line — carried here, as the banked register carries him, as an unverified bonus line between Batchelder and the new century, the memoirs read whole being his settler. J. B. Seaman, M.D. (b. Clyde, N.Y., 21 June 1864; Medical College of Indiana, 1900) — "in 1901 came to Osceola and entered upon practice." Louis Proudfit, M.D. (b. Elkhart County, 10 February 1876; Medical College of Indiana, 1902) — "located at Osceola immediately" on graduating; his mother was Emeline (Bancroft) Proudfit "of Osceola," which Bancroft her parent was Howard does not state, and it is not assigned. Four names, three at sketch strength and one at a line: that is the township's physician roll at the record's strength, and the health leg's wider course is its own.

The educators who stand where the register looked for editors and professional men: John A. Byers — born in Penn Township, son of Benjamin and Louvina Byers; thirty years an educator in St. Joseph County and principal of the Eighth Grade high school of South Bend when Howard sketched him (vol.Calvin Moon (Chapman, pp. 829, 831) — Valparaiso College, three years in a railroad engineer corps, elected County Superintendent of Public Instruction in June 1877 and unanimously re-elected. Levi W. Lott — taught seven terms in the Willow Creek school-house and four in No. 9, a miller besides. Geo. W. Redding — "taught vocal music in St. Joseph county for 35 years," farming summers on section 18. Nathan W. Young — carried chain for the government surveyors, pre-empted land while the surveys ran, and is called by Chapman "the author of several useful inventions" that others patented and profited from, because he could not afford the patents.

Lawyers, architects, editors — the empty chairs, tested: no 19th- or 20th-century lawyer practising in Osceola or seated in Penn Township outside Mishawaka was found at line strength in Chapman, Howard, Goodspeed or the atlas as read and swept in either pass — the township's legal business ran to Mishawaka and South Bend, whose lawyers are those cities' people. No architect of record is named for any building on this ground in any source reached in the whole build — the school, church and mill buildings of the record stand unattributed, and the Architecture section's survey record is the settler if one exists. Of editors: the town had no long-running newspaper of its own in the sources reached (the newspapers leg's whole), and the one editor the ground produces is at boundary strength — of section 8 (directory: "minister of the Gospel," settled 1855), the minister-farmer of the banked file whose South Bend ERA and Mishawaka's Enterprise are the print names that touch this town; he is the township's editor as the record gives one, seated here at exactly that strength, neither promoted to an Osceola editor nor dropped. The three chairs are printed empty because the searches were run, not because they were not.

Sources:

1. Howard, vol. 2, pp. 928 (Seaman, Proudfit), and part 45 as transcribed (Byers); Chapman, pp. 802–803 (Batchelder), 824 (Lott), 829–831 (Calvin Moon), 835 (Redding), 790 (Young) —.
2. Goodspeed, Pictorial and Biographical Memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties
3. The negative searches: Chapman, Howard, Goodspeed and the 1875 atlas read and surname-swept across both passes of this build for a Penn-seated lawyer or a building's named architect — none at line strength, as printed.