At this time there was one mail every two weeks from Cincinnati, and the only newspaper to find its way to the pioneer village regularly was the _Liberty Hall_ from Cincinnati. In 1822, in response to the demands of the town, the government established regular routes between Fort Wayne and Chicago, as well as the Ohio villages on the St. Mary’s. The chief industry of the village in these early years continued to be trade with the Indians, either for their furs and peltries or for their annuity money. With the end of the Indian wars, the Miamis and neighboring tribes once more found time for hunting and trapping. At the same time the establishment of European peace in 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic era, brought about a sharp rise in the price of furs. New and powerful traders began to operate in the Maumee-Wabash area with many coming to Fort Wayne as the central point of the region. We have already noted the firm established by Samuel Hanna and his brother-in-law, James Barnett in 1819. A year later the American Fur Company, operating from Detroit and owned by John Jacob Astor, established an important branch at Fort Wayne. Benjamin Kercheval, Alexis Coquillard, and Francis Comparet were its first representatives. Comparet and Coquillard, both came directly from Detroit for the purpose of establishing the company’s branch house at Fort Wayne. Comparet remained at Fort Wayne permanently, but Coquillard later established a trading station on the St. Joseph river of Lake Michigan, on the site of the city of South Bend, as an outpost of the company’s establishment at Fort Wayne. In 1822, the family of Alexander Ewing came to Fort Wayne from Troy, Ohio. The Ewing family consisted of Alexander Ewing, an old Pennsylvania trader, his wife, Charlotte, three daughters—Charlott, Lavina, and Louisa—, and four sons—Charles, who became president judge of the circuit court of Indiana, Alexander H., who later became a prosperous Cincinnati merchant, and George W. and William G., who became associated with their father in the trading establishment. Alexander Ewing with his sons, George W. and William G., did business under the name of “A. Ewing and Sons”. After the older Ewing’s death in 1826, the firm became “W. G. and G. W. Ewing.” The Ewings became known for their real-estate and fur-trading operations, the latter on a scale that made them rivals of the American Fur Company in the Great Lakes region. At first the two firms were friendly toward each other, but a trade war which eventually broke out between the two companies in 1828 resulted in the bankruptcy of the American Fur Company five year later. The Ewings also found it profitable to advance goods to the Indians, thereby presenting large claims against the annuity payments for the Indians. The Ewings had branch houses in Logansport, Largro, and Peru, and posts in Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, at the height of their business interests.