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The two halves of this test separate cleanly, and the separation is the finding. Church music in Walkerton is as old as its congregations — St. Patrick's from 1856, the Methodist society's first church house in 1859, the Baptist house of 1870, the Presbyterian organization of 1876, all carried whole in the Religion section — but no source reached names a first organist, a first choir, a first hymn or a dedication anthem for any of them. What the record does carry, at obituary strength, is the institution's durability: the Religion section's Baptist article records a First Baptist Church member of forty-nine years' choir service who died in March 2017 — a single line that proves a standing church choir at Walkerton's First Baptist across roughly the second half of the twentieth century, and is, at the strength reached, the earliest-dated evidence of organized church singing this section can print as a course rather than an assumption. No organ builder, organist or choir is named for the town's nineteenth-century churches in Chapman, in Howard, or in the congregational records the Religion section swept; the first church music of Walkerton was certainly sung and is certainly undocumented, and both halves of that sentence print.
The instrument-maker test was run on the audit's exact terms — makers who lived here, not instruments sold here — and the town's record is rich precisely on the wrong side of that line. Instruments were sold here from the start: G. E. Libbey, who came in 1871 and opened the town's jewelry store, dealt in "watches, clocks, jewelry, silver-plated ware, musical instruments and sewing machines," on Chapman's own sketch (the directories' jeweller is Cornelius B. A century later the trade still advertised to the school: the 1965 Echoes yearbook carries Shemberger's Music, Inc. — "Pianos, Organs, Music, Records; Record Players; Band Instruments" — in its sponsor pages. Sellers, both. Of a maker — an organ builder like the Van Dinter of the Mishawaka test, a piano maker, a luthier, a band-instrument craftsman resident and working in Walkerton — Chapman, Howard, the Polk directory runs read whole for this build (1882, 1884, 1916–17: carriage-makers, wagon-makers, harness manufacturers, a planing mill, barrel-hoop makers, and no instrument maker among them), and the web record reached return no name. The test prints at its result: no instrument maker who lived in Walkerton is documented; the town bought its instruments, from its jeweller in 1871 to its yearbook advertiser in 1965, and made none that the record knows.
Sources: this build's Religion section (congregational courses; the First Baptist choir-service line, March 2017); Chapman (1880) business canvass and Libbey sketch, and Polk 1882/1884/1916–17; Echoes, Walkerton High School yearbook 1965 (Shemberger's Music advertisement). Closure: MIXED — the seller record is DUG; the first-church-music course and any maker are a NAMED GAP, settlers: the congregations' own minute and dedication records (St. Patrick's parish archives; the Methodist and Presbyterian session records) and the Independent's church columns across its run.