The Town Plat of 1831: The Founding Speculation, Priced in Full

The Town Plat of 1831: The Founding Speculation, Priced in Full

The fortune: Before South Bend had an industry it had a land speculation, and unusually for such ventures, its accounts survive. Lathrop M. Taylor's own real-estate book, as printed by Bert Anson from the Taylor papers in the Indiana Magazine of History (1948), enters the partners' costs item by item: the federal purchase of 71 acres of Section 12 in 1830 for $89.63; the south part of the southwest fractional quarter of Section 1, 44.60 acres, bought of Benjamin Potter on 18 March 1831 for $380.00; $1,600.00 paid to Gebo to relinquish a rival title; $600.00 paid to secure the county seat; $130.36 of expense in laying out — a total entered of $2,824.98. On that ground, on 28 March 1831, Taylor and Alexis Coquillard laid out the town of South Bend in 408 lots.

Its scale: The same ledger tradition gives the return in a single line: the 408 lots "sold finally yielded a return of $21,076.35 to the partners" (Anson, from the Coquillard–Taylor sales book and Taylor's real-estate book). The county-seat bargain that made the plat valuable is in Chapman's county history, quoting the board order: Taylor, Coquillard, Joseph Rohrer, Samuel Studebaker, Samuel Hanna, and David H. Colerick bound themselves to pay $3,000 if the county seat were permanently located at South Bend, and Taylor and Coquillard donated fifteen lots for the county's use, lots for three congregations, and four acres for a public graveyard. It is the only complete cost-to-return account of the founding speculation that survives in print, and it is the scale of the first South Bend fortune entire: under three thousand dollars in, a little over twenty-one thousand out, divided among partners, over years of lot sales.

Sources:

1. Bert Anson, "The Early Years of Lathrop M. Taylor, The Fur Trader," Indiana Magazine of History XLIV (1948) — the plat ledger: $89.63, $380.00, $1,600.00, $600.00, $130.36, total $2,824.98; the return of $21,076.35; from Taylor's Real Estate book and the Coquillard–Taylor Sales Book.
2. Chapman, History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880) — the $3,000 county-seat bond and the donated lots, quoting the board order.