Paper — the La Salle Paper Company and the first paper made here

The city's paper trade, to 1907

The first paper: Howard's manufactures chapter gives paper its own section, and its fact is a founding one: in the La Salle Paper Company's building on East Madison Street, on the east race, Beach & Keedy had made, as proprietors, the first paper manufactured in South Bend. By 1907 the La Salle Paper Company stood under the sole management of Frank P. Nicely, and it was the city's only paper factory. The Industrial Revolution record names the company in its survey of the chapter; the paper trade itself is the gap, and it stands here.

The trade around it: The 1889 manufacturers' directory lists three paper names for South Bend: the Indiana Paper Co.; Ethan S. Reynolds, paper and pulp mill; and the South Bend Paper Co. The Indiana Paper Mill's later course runs through another entry of this history — the mill history carried by the Monon Society records the Staley and Stephenson mill's acquisition of the Indiana Paper Mill in 1904, with its water power — and that course stands in the Businesses record's Stephenson entry, not retold here. What this entry fixes is the trade's shape: paper was made in this city from Beach & Keedy's first manufacture, through at least three firms in 1889, to a single surviving factory on the east race in 1907.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (1907), manufactures chapter, sec. 13 — the La Salle Paper Company under Frank P. Nicely, the East Madison Street building on the east race, Beach & Keedy's first paper, and the company's standing as the city's only paper factory in 1907.
2. Directory of Indiana Manufacturers (1889), South Bend listings, as transcribed — the Indiana Paper Co., Ethan S. Reynolds's paper and pulp mill, and the South Bend Paper Co.
3. Monon Society, the Staley mill history — the 1904 acquisition of the Indiana Paper Mill and its water power by the Stephenson mill's line.