The Black congregations as their own set, tested: no AME, Baptist or COGIC seat on this ground

TESTED NEGATIVE, NOVEMBER 2026 · THE TEST PRINTED WHOLE AT THE SIZE FOUND

The test, run as its own set and not as a footnote to any other congregation.None returns one. Every AME, Black Baptist and COGIC congregation the directory record returns for this county is seated in South Bend (with Mishawaka seats in the wider record) — those are boundary congregations of another city and are not named here as this ground's, nor retold.

The population record bounds the test, and the bound is printed. this history, read from the census volumes themselves, returns no Black residents in Penn Township in 1850 or 1860 — “free colored, none returned” in 1850, the county's returned free coloured population lying outside Penn — and thirteen in 1870, in the “Penn township, including Mishawaka town” form, so the thirteen cannot be assigned to Osceola's side of the township on that record. A resident Black congregation on this ground in the historic period would therefore have been a congregation without a counted resident base in the volumes, and none is recorded in the twentieth-century register or directory record either. The finding is a tested negative bounded by a counted near-absence — not a claim that no Black worshipper ever lived or worshipped here, which no directory sweep could prove. The geography and census telling of the township's Black community as a community is Communities' article in this cluster (leg23-black-geography); this article owns only the congregational test, and it returns negative.

Sources:

1. SBAGS church-records index; this history whole-register read (73 organisations, November 2026); Notre Dame / Saint Mary's area-congregations lists; open directory searches, November 2026, as stated.
2. Population: Seventh Census (1850), Table II, p. 774; Eighth Census (1860); Ninth Census (1870), Vol. I, Table III, p. 129 — “Penn twp., incl. Mishawaka town” form stated in the article.