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1880 · the Chapman record as the town keeps it
The roll: the town's history page preserves Chapman's 1880 inventory of Walkerton whole, and it is the nearest thing the founding generation has to a directory: "In 1880, Walkerton consisted of four dry-goods establishments, one clothing store, two hardware and implement stores, three drug stores, one large furniture store, two hotels, one a very fine house, of which Mr. J. M. B. Giberson was proprietor, also groceries and restaurants, and two railroad depots, one grain depot, two millinery stores, two printing offices… two meat shops, two saloons, one town hall, owned by Jacob Bender, one school-house and three churches. In all there were about 50 business men engaged here." Two names stand in it — Giberson the hotelier and Bender the town hall's owner — and they are printed at the strength the inventory gives them, which is the strength of a man identified by his building. The other forty-eight of Chapman's fifty businessmen stand unnamed in every source read; the 1875 county atlas's Lincoln Township directory (pp.
Sources:
- Town of Walkerton, official history page — the 1880 inventory, quoted from the Chapman (1880) record.
- An Illustrated Historical Atlas of St. Joseph County (1875) — the Lincoln directory's existence and address, from the atlas's own index; named as settler.