Project Scroll Research Note 2026-50: The first years of H. & C. Studebaker in the histories of 1875: the opening in February 1852, the partners Smyser and Hoge, and Henry Studebaker's church and death

Two histories of 1875 give the founding day of H. & C. Studebaker, the South Bend wagon shop that became the Studebaker company. The county atlas says that "it was the 12th of February" 1852 when Henry and Clement Studebaker opened their shop on Michigan Street, and that "The first entry in their books was made on the 16th of February," a debit against A. R. & J. H. Harper; Goodrich and Tuttle's state history gives "the sixteenth day of February, 1852" as the day they opened. The same atlas page names two outside partners missing from the later histories we have read: Henry Smyser, admitted in 1853 (Studebakers & Smyser), and Israel Hoge, in 1854–55 (Studebakers & Hoge). Henry Studebaker, who left the firm in 1858, is said in later accounts to have left over his church's objections; the Brethren historian Otho Winger wrote in 1917 that when Henry's daughter Emma was baptized in 1869, "Emma's parents were not members of the church," and that both joined it later. Henry died at South Bend on Saturday, 2 March 1895, by the report sent from there that day, not on 12 March as Howard (1907) has it. Project Scroll Research Note 2026-50, version 1. The note sets out the record quoted, where it is held, what it changes, its limits, and what was searched before calling it new. Web version: projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-50/.