The name tale: John Walker the promoter, or James H. Walker the banker

The claim family · the town's name, told two ways by its two best sources

Telling one: Timothy Edward Howard's county history of 1907 states it as settled: the town was "named from John Walker, the promoter of a railroad through the town, from Plymouth to Laporte, known at first as the Indianapolis, Peru & Chicago railroad" — the "Pe-wee road" of local memory, long since part of the Lake Erie & Western system. Telling two: the town's own published history states it otherwise: "Walkerton was named for James H. Walker, a banker who in the middle of the 19th century helped build the Cincinnati, Peru, and Chicago Railroad. The CP&C ran through Walkerton." Why both were available to be remembered: the road through Walkerton was built in pieces that carried both corporate names — the Cincinnati, Peru & Chicago, chartered June 2, 1853, built the La Porte–Plymouth reach through the townsite, and the consolidated Indianapolis, Peru & Chicago absorbed it; a Walker attached to either company was a Walker attached to the town's railroad, and local memory had two true roads to hang one half-remembered man on. The verdict: unresolved, and printed unresolved. John Walker the promoter, in the county history; James H. Walker the banker, in the town's; no source reached by this build decides between them, and the question stands open as GAP-W-NAME-1, worked in the mysteries register below. Beside it the Story of Walkerton section prints the plats' lesser conflict whole — Howard's instrument record (West Troy, December 14, 1854, Elias D. Jones; Walkerton, June 20, 1856, William C. Hannah) against Chapman's looser telling of 1880 (Walkerton "laid out in March, 1857, by one Mr. Allen") — and this section keeps the pointer rather than a second telling: the documents are the Story of Walkerton section's, and "Mr. Allen" rides in the register below.

Sources

1. This build's Spine leg — both tellings, the corporate chain, and the plat conflict, told whole.
2. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), pp. 316–317; Town of Walkerton, "History" (2012), as quoted in Kristin L. Hoganson, The Heartland (2019) — the two tellings in their carriers.