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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 whole transport technology of the first farm order. Second: the horse economy at its measured peak — the implement and harness trades of the canvasses (Cotton's and Cunningham's implement houses, the Rupels' harness shops), the three liveries of 1882–84, and Myron Leroy's sale stable selling 150 head in the single year 1906 (the Businesses file carries the trade whole). Third: the dealers' shelves turn — George P. Ross's hardware house embracing "buggies, carriages and machinery" by 1907, D. W. Place's implement branch and Houser Bros' "hardware and implts" in 1916, and in the same canvass the first motor listings (Apple's autos and garage; Miller's taxicabs) that end the horse succession. No first tractor, threshing ring or combine is dated for Lincoln Township in any source read; the county's tractor and horse counts at dated census points are carried whole in the South Bend build's farms file, and the township's own mechanisation dates stand as a gap (GAP-W6-16) with the Independent's farm columns and the extension reports as settlers. The succession prints at the strength of its three points, and no fourth is invented.
Sources:
- Howard (1907), vol. 2 (the Dare hauls; Leroy's 1906 sales; Ross's lines).
- Polk 1882–83, 1884–85, 1916–17, Walkerton entries (the implement, harness, livery and first motor listings), read whole.