The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Polk Indiana Gazetteer & Business Directory 1916–17, pt. 2, pp. 962–964, read first-hand
Roseland's business history starts from a directory silence that is itself evidence. The Polk gazetteer for 1916–17 — the state's standard business directory for the incorporation years — contains no entry for Roseland, St. Joseph County, at all. Its alphabetical run of town entries passes from Rosedale in Parke County directly to Roselawn, and the Roselawn it prints is the Newton County railroad town ("12 [miles] from Lowell, its nearest banking point"), with a garage keeper of its own, Harvey H. Nelson — a different place from the Roselawn that petitioned to become this town, printed here whole so the trap stops travelling. Rosewood and Ross follow. A town of 165 people incorporated in January 1916 may simply have missed the canvass; but the same carrier entered Walkerton, elsewhere in this county, with two banks to its name, so small St. Joseph County places were within its reach. The directory's silence, the county books' silence about any store, tavern or post office on Section 23, and the town code's own account — which dates the town's chief businesses to 1927 — agree: the corridor's trade is a creation of the incorporated town, not an inheritance from the farm ground.