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TWO PLATS THAT LEFT NOTHING BUT THEIR PLATS
Osceola was the third town platted on its ground, and the only one that lived: Howard files the first two under "Towns That Were." Williamsport was surveyed by Thomas P. Bulla for proprietor John Newell, its plat acknowledged 13 December 1834, "at the junction of the St. Joseph river and Babaugo creek, on the southeast fraction of the northeast quarter of section nine" — the creek mouth itself, three years before Osceola's plat on the same section — and Howard's whole obituary for it is one sentence: "It has left no record but its plat." Canton followed a year later, surveyed by Bulla on the Baugo in section 16, its survey acknowledged 14 December 1835 by its proprietor, William Ireland; it was vacated on 3 June 1844, on petition of J. E. Hollister. Howard's summary of the ground's paper geography closes the pair: "None of the towns in this part of the county, except Osceola, have had more than an ephemeral existence" (pp. 308–309). The paper towns matter to the Story of Osceola section because they fix the speculation's order: town-making on this ground began as a surveyor's business in 1834, on a creek whose mill seat was two years old, and two of the three towns the surveyors drew were never built at all. The third nearly wasn't either, as the next article's record shows.