The successor orders: Spanish War veterans, the Legion, and the VFW

1898 — present

Each war its own lodge: The GAR's pattern — a war makes a brotherhood — repeated with every generation. The United Spanish War Veterans kept Zollinger Camp No. 36 in Fort Wayne in 1915, meeting at 1032 Calhoun Street, and the Union Veteran Legion, a Civil War officers' and long-service society, kept Encampment No. 51 at Calhoun and Wayne. The First World War's order was the American Legion, and Fort Wayne's flagship became Post No. 47, today at 601 Reed Road; its Sons of the American Legion squadron was already fielding a ritual degree team by 1938, the Legion's own newspaper records. By the middle of the twentieth century the Chamber of Commerce's civic directory lists five Legion posts in the city — Nos. 47, 82, 148, 241 and 296 — of which Post 241 survives in the record as the Waynedale post. The Veterans of Foreign Wars planted its posts in the same decades: Post No. 857, the Jim Eby Post, was founded in 1922, "less than five years after the end of the First World War," as Representative Jim Banks put it in the Congressional Record of January 11, 2022, honoring the post's centennial — over 500 members including its Auxiliary, at 2202 West Main Street. Kekionga Post No. 1421 on Bluffton Road and Fort Miami Post No. 10006 on South Anthony Boulevard carry the order's later Fort Wayne charters. The veterans' orders are the lodge form that never contracted to nothing: each new war renewed the charter base, and their halls — part clubroom, part service office — remain working buildings in the city today.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., Fort Wayne city directory, 1915 — Zollinger Camp No. 36; Union Veteran Legion Encampment No. 51.
2. Chamber of Commerce of Fort Wayne, civic and fraternal directory (mid-twentieth century) — American Legion Posts Nos. 47, 82, 148, 241 and 296.
3. The American Legion, Sons of The American Legion publications (1938) — Post 47's squadron degree team; Allen County veterans service listings — Post 47 at 601 Reed Road.
4. Congressional Record, January 11, 2022 — Representative Jim Banks honoring 100 years of VFW Post 857; Allen County veterans service listings — Posts 857, 1421 and 10006.