First federal entries on the townsite sections

General Land Office record (new system, July 2026) at shell strength; Indiana Archives and Records Administration, LaPorte–Winamac Land Office Entries 1833–1855; the 1826 Potawatomi treaty text

The tract-book question — who first entered the townsite's sections from the United States — stands open, but its settlers are no longer general directions; they are named instruments. The townsite sections are Sections 23 and 25, Township 38 North, Range 2 East, Second Principal Meridian, sold through the La Porte land office. The General Land Office's own tract-book search returned only its new system's loading shell — the run stands unexecuted, its parameters held (Indiana; Second Principal Meridian; T38N R2E; Sections 23 and 25; La Porte office) and never printed as a negative. The state instrument is documented whole: the Indiana Archives' LaPorte–Winamac Land Office Entries, 1833–1855, a computerized series of 48,562 records carrying each entry's purchase date and complete land description — the office opened at La Porte in 1833, held its first sale on 12 August 1833, and moved to Winamac in 1839, its district embracing St. Joseph County. A section-level query of that series is a browser-class run and was not executed at text strength; it is this gap's first settler. The federal tract books themselves survive in a second carrier — the FamilySearch tract-book collection (3,907 volumes, browse-only behind sign-in) — documented, not registered for. The published shortcut does not exist: Waters' Indiana Land Entries covers the Cincinnati and Vincennes districts only. The Michigan Road test that rides with this gap — whether the townsite sections were among the state's per-mile selections under the road grant — stands unresolved in a precise form: the mechanism is proven from the 1826 treaty text itself (a 100-foot road strip, plus one section of good land per mile of road, contiguous), the selections are state-land records held by the state archives in a named class, their purchasers are not indexed online, and no section-level list naming Sections 23 or 25 was reached at web strength. Neither "selected" nor "never selected" is proven; the settler is the archives' Michigan Road Lands selection lists, at the section level.