Project Scroll Research Note 2026-61: The Plainwell stagecoach photograph: Grand Rapids Public Library negative 1896, its earliest printing yet found, 1969, and the unsourced "last stage" of 22 October 1869

A photograph of a crowded four-horse coach before a clapboard building at Plainwell, Michigan, circulates as "the last stage coach trip from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids," 22 October 1869. Its negative is in the Grand Rapids Public Library (Coll. 33-10-24, Neg. 1896), catalogued with a supplied title as a Concord coach with "those on top of the coach in Civil War uniforms." The earliest printing yet found is in the village's centennial book, Plainwell, 1869 to 1969: The First Hundred Years (1969), which shows the same scene, down to the cut-off sign "STOV" at the right, captioned as Patterson, Glynn & Lyon's stagecoach "in front of THE PLAINWELL HOUSE … in 1859." The library has also dated the picture 1865. No source of the period or since gives 22 October 1869 or names a last coach on any day. Project Scroll Research Note 2026-61, 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/2026-61/.