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Farms
Lincoln Township was marsh before it was farmland: a considerable portion of it was still "marshy and wet" in 1880, "fast being reclaimed by draining," and the farm course below is the record of that reclamation worked by named families — from the first settlement in the fall of 1835, through the wheat years when 200,000 bushels were bought at the Walkerton depot in one season, to the onion-and-cucumber ground of the drained muck and the dairy and livestock farms of the present county frame. The township's farmers are unusually well named: Chapman's 1880 sketches give their acres and valuations one by one, and Howard's 1907 sketches carry two farms by their names, Walnut Lane and Plain View.
The county in numbers — the frame every township farm stands in
2017–2022 · USDA CENSUS OF AGRICULTURE, COUNTY PROFILES
No official count of Lincoln Township's farms exists, and none is printed here; the farm economy's measured frame is the county's. The Census of Agriculture's county profile for St. Joseph County counts 629 farms on 149,981 acres…
The first farms — settlement from the fall of 1835, and Chapman's farm roll of 1880
1835–1880 · THE PIONEER FARMS AT SKETCH STRENGTH
The first settlement of the township was made in the fall of 1835 by Christian Fulmer and family. Chapman's narrative continues: "The next spring Thomas H. Wiley came in" — the spring of 1836. Wiley's own sketch in the same…
The wheat era — ox teams to Michigan City, then 200,000 bushels at the depot
1835–1880s · THE FIRST CROP ORDER
Wheat was the township's first money crop, and its arc is dated at both ends. At the arc's opening the crop moved by ox team: William Dare's two-day hauls to Michigan City, the lake port, before any railroad in the county…
Drainage — the marsh-reclamation farm era
1880 AND AFTER · THE MAKING OF THE FARMLAND
"A considerable portion of the land of Lincoln township is marshy and wet, but is fast being reclaimed by draining." Chapman's sentence of 1880 is the farm file's hinge: the township's best later ground — the flat muck of the onion and cucumber fields — was under water or reeds within living memory of the men whose farms the same chapter lists, and Jacob Rupel's deer hunting in "the swamps and marshes of the Kankakee" is the same ground seen from the farmhouse door.
Sources:
- Chapman (1880), Lincoln Township chapter (the marsh sentence; the Rupel sketch's Kankakee passage).
- The land family (W-5), in build — the drainage works whole, carried there.
Specialty ground — the onion trade whole, the cucumber economy, and the mint test
1903–1916 AND THE TESTS · MUCK CROPS AT RECORD STRENGTH
The drained ground's cash crop of record is the onion, and Walkerton in 1916 was an onion-shipping point with four buyers on the ground. Polk's entry names them: Daniel Beal, onion buyer; Nels Erickson, onion buyer; George…
The corn-and-livestock order, and the dairy record — stock-raising whole, a creamery never named
1880–2022 · THE SECOND ORDER
Chapman's summary line of 1880 — "farming in connection with stock-raising" — is the township's second order arriving inside the first. Its hands are named across the canvasses: Henry W. Hostetter, live stock (1882, 1884); the…
Named farms and the farm families at full strength — Walnut Lane, Plain View, the Places
1880–1907 · THE FARMS THE RECORD NAMES
Two Lincoln Township farms carry names in the record, and both stand in Howard. Isaac T. Snethen's homestead is the Walnut Lane Farm , 80 acres, "all under cultivation but ten" at Howard's writing — the improved farm at its…
Mechanisation — the succession the township's record actually gives
1835–1916 · OXEN, HORSES, IMPLEMENTS
The township's mechanisation prints as a succession of dated points, not a curve, because that is what its record holds. First point: the ox team — William Dare's two-day grain hauls to Michigan City in the pre-railroad years…
The farmers' institutions — the county Farm Bureau from 1911, the extension service, and the empty chairs
1911–1953 · THE INSTITUTIONS IN A ROW
St. Joseph County's farmers organized before the state did, and the county bureau's own paper preserves the dates. The Farm News of St. Joseph County , the bureau's paper, in its June 1953 retrospective, traced the organization…
Gaps, boundaries, and what remains
NAMED GAPS GAP-W6-11 – GAP-W6-18 · THE TOWNSHIP TODAY
What remains. The township today is a farmed township around a small town: the county frame's direction — fewer farms, more acres in farms, a larger average size, 2017 to 2022 — is the only measured statement the official record…
The dated series: St. Joseph County farming, 2012–2022, read from the census itself
AUDIT ROW #312 · USDA CENSUS OF AGRICULTURE, TABLE 1 AND COUNTY PROFILES, FIRST-HAND
The checklist wants the farming story dated and counted, and the count exists at county frame: the Census of Agriculture's Table 1 for St. Joseph County, read first-hand for three censuses. 2012: 691 farms; 151,975 acres of land…
The wheat arc — with the banked set's two tellings flagged, not folded
AUDIT ROW #313 · CHAPMAN'S FIGURE IN TWO FORMS · DELTA CANDIDATE BANKED
The wheat story's modern end is counted (50 farms, 2,853 acres, 186,557 bushels in 2012); its nineteenth-century end stands in the banked set in two conflicting forms, and this section prints both and flags the conflict rather…
The farmers' institutions row: one whole, two open
AUDIT ROW #314 · FARM BUREAU STANDS · GRANGE AND MUTUAL INSURANCE UNDER SETTLERS
The institutions row of the farm leg stands in three different states, and this article prints each institution in its own state rather than levelling them. The Farm Bureau The Grange limb stands open: no Walkerton or Lincoln…
The market line: no standing farmers' market in Walkerton — the line dug once
AUDIT ROW #315 · DUG ONCE HERE; THE FOOD ADDENDUM CROSS-REFERENCES THIS ARTICLE
There is no standing farmers' market in Walkerton in the directories searched — and the two near-misses the search returns are printed, because they are exactly the traps this build's containment discipline exists for. The…
Suburban conversion, measured: the county frame says consolidation
AUDIT ROW #316 · LAND IN FARMS, 2012–2022 · THE TOWNSHIP'S OWN COURSE STANDS BANKED
Measured at the frame the census gives, the conversion story of the last decade is not farmland vanishing: land in farms in St. Joseph County went from 151,975 acres (2012) to 153,034 (2022) — level — while the farm count fell by…