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the townsite purchase, 1831
The founding act: Lathrop Minor Taylor is the second name on the town's founding instrument: with Coquillard he bought the townsite when the cessions made it buyable and platted South Bend in 1831. Where Coquillard's founding was the trader's — a post, a station, a policy of settlement — Taylor's was the proprietor's: the lots, the sales, the books. His own ledgers survive as the priced record of the founding speculation, and the Wealth section prints them: $2,824.98 in, $21,076.35 out over the 408 lots, on the figures the Indiana Magazine of History published from his papers in 1948.
The run: Taylor stands in the town's early government and land record at the size the Story of South Bend section and Government sections carry, and in this section at the size of the partnership: Coquillard made the settlement necessary, Taylor made it saleable, and the town that resulted carries both acts in its plat. His estate, on the same published account, was modest — the fortune of the founding was the town itself, and what he kept of it is the Wealth section's.
Sources:
- Notable People — "The traders: the men the town grew on" (Taylor as the second founder).
- Great Fortunes — "Taylor" (Part One) — the townsite ledgers via Anson, Indiana Magazine of History (1948): $2,824.98 in, $21,076.35 out, 408 lots; the estate's modest standing.
- The Story of South Bend and Government — Taylor in the founding and early-government record, cross-referenced.