Chapman's marsh, and its Island

A MILE-WIDE WETLAND PRINTED WHOLE — AND NOT IDENTIFIED

The largest single piece of ground in the township's early record is a marsh that no modern source names: Chapman describes it in the Penn chapter at full length (p. 789): "there is a large marsh extending from the St. Joseph river near South Bend toward the southeast, almost the entire length of the township, or to within a half mile of the eastern line of the township. This marsh varies from three-fourths of a mile to two miles in width. Near its center is an elevated, oblong tract of land consisting of 200 to 300 acres, which is under cultivation and known as the 'Island.' This peculiarly shaped marsh is regarded by the citizens of this township as once forming an arm of Lake Michigan. … Many of these marshes have been drained, and now constitute a portion of the most fertile land in Penn township." The passage is printed whole because its geography matters: Chapman puts the marsh's head at the river near South Bend — the township's west end — and runs it southeast across the whole township. That axis does not fit the Baugo Creek bottoms, which sit in the township's northeast corner at the county line, and the easy identification of Chapman's marsh with the Baugo bottoms is therefore not supported by Chapman's own text. No modern source found for this section names the marsh, its Island, or its drained footprint: the county parks and soil materials, the federal names record and the watershed plan were all searched against the passage's terms and none carries it. The ground itself — a mile-wide wet swale crossing Penn diagonally, its dry Island farmed inside it, now presumably under the township's ditch network and its drained-muck peppermint ground of Howard's account — is a map question this section leaves open. The records that would draw it are named at this section's edge: the 1829 federal survey plat and field notes for this township would show the marsh before drainage, as would the 1863 Stokes map of the county. The federal swamp-land frame belongs to the same ground: the Swamp Land Act of 1850 granted Indiana its swamp and overflowed lands for reclamation, and a township carrying a marsh of this size was selection ground under that grant; the selections actually made inside Penn Township stand in the state's swamp-land records and are named there as a settler class, not asserted here.