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The strong-man pattern — the settler who wrestles the bear, lifts the log no two men could lift, throws every challenger at the raising — was tested first-hand in the two county histories' Penn Township sketches, the ground where such a figure would have to stand: Charles C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), Penn chapter and biographical sketches, and Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 2 Penn sketches, as banked and extracted in this build's Notable People. The sweep for the pattern's own vocabulary — bear, wrestle, lift, giant, feat, prodigious strength — returns no folk hero on this ground. What the sketches hold instead are three near-kernels, printed at their true size so the negative is seen to be a read negative and not an unsearched one. John Laidlaw's journey: Howard's sketch (vol. 2, pp. 927–928, in his son Edwin's biography) has him come to Indiana on foot at twenty-one — an endurance kernel, but Howard prints it as biography, not feat-lore, and Chapman's sketch (p. 822) tells the same arrival without the walk. Nathan W. William C. Smith's lost arm — the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern station agent at Osceola from 1863, who lost his right arm coupling cars (Chapman, pp. 837–838) — is an injury record, not a feat. No tall-tale inflation attaches to any of the three in either history: no feats multiply in the retelling, no challenger is thrown, no animal is wrestled. Verdict: tested negative. Penn Township's county-history sketches contain hardship, endurance and loss in quantity, and no folk hero; if the town keeps one in oral tradition, the carrier has not reached print in any source this section opened, and the settler for that oral record is Kiracofe 1988, Indiana State Library 977.201 S143zok.
Sources: Chapman (1880), Penn Township chapter and sketches at pp. 790, 822, 837–838; Howard (1907), vol. 2, pp. 927–928; this build's Notable People (the sketches banked and extracted whole, conflicts unmerged). Read November 2026.