Industrial Fortunes by Sector (L17·6)

As of November 2026 — figures only where published; absences printed

Mills. The Bancroft interest is the sector's whole measurable story: the brothers' saw-and-grist mill of 1856 at 25 barrels a day, owned by a nephew by 1880 (Chapman), against Goodspeed's account of Zelotes purchasing the original sawmill with 160 acres and William building the 1856 mill on nearly 300 acres — the date-and-priority conflict prints whole in the Rule article above and is not re-merged here. No published valuation of the mill interest — no probate figure, no sale price — appears in the record reached; the sector's fortune is sized in capacity and acres because those are the figures published. Zelotes Bancroft's second mill carries an uncertain date in Chapman, printed as uncertain.

Creamery. George E. Moon — 240 acres on Howard's sketch — stands as president, treasurer and salesman of Crystal Springs Creamery by 1907 (Howard), and Polk's 1916–17 directory lists Crystal Springs Creamery Co. among the township's five firms. The Moon creamery's nineteenth-century predecessor question and closing course remain the Businesses leg's open gap (settler: the Tribune run and state dairy reports). No published figure sizes the creamery interest in either century — no capitalization, no probate number — and the absence prints.

Grain and land. The elevator point is an open gap (settler: Lake Shore valuation maps, Sanborn maps, the Tribune run), so the grain sector prints as landholders: Laidlaw (Chapman's 610 acres; Howard's 580 — whole, per the Rule article), McKnight's roughly 600 entered acres with money lent latterly, George Eutzler's 560 acres in section 26 (Chapman; his father's purchase was 320, in Howard), Aaron Jones at 400-plus acres in the county and about 100 in Iowa, a State Grange master — the roll continues at published size in the Farms leg (Weis 385, Eby 282, Eller 250, the Crofoot conflict at 240/288, Pulling 235 — the Charles/Cyrus given-name flag standing — Ritter 116 at $100 the acre). Probate notices for the Bancroft, Moon and McKnight families: none appears in the fragments read, and the leg prints that absence sector by sector rather than supplying the valuations the genre usually invents. Where a sketch is all the record holds, the sketch is the size.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880) and Goodspeed (1893), Bancroft sketches; Howard (1907), Moon sketches; Polk directory, 1916–17 —, Notable People, Farms & Agriculture.
2. Banked Farms & Agriculture farm roll (acreages as published, conflicts whole).