The burials: 183 in the memorial park, and the older grounds' silence

The county veterans index, counted

The count: the county veterans index — the graves-and-service index of the county's veterans, carried into this build's working sources whole — records 183 burials at St. Joseph Valley Memorial Park, this ground's great cemetery on Cleveland Road. Partitioned by the service the index prints against each name: 136 carry Second World War service (127 of them that war alone), 25 carry Korea-era service (including seven who carry the Second World War beside it), 5 carry Vietnam, 4 the First World War, 1 states peacetime service only, and 21 state no service. The arithmetic closes: 183. It is a count of an index's rows, printed as such — the park's own count of its veterans runs larger, as the flag-placing record of every spring implies — and it excludes by the index's own rule the men of the Second World War and Korea who lie there under no printed service.

The older grounds: against that modern number, the older burying grounds of the two townships return a silence at index strength: no burial in the index stands under the Harris Prairie cemetery's name at all, though the prairie's dead of the war generations must lie somewhere, and the Cemeteries leg of this build — which owns the grounds whole, the Harris Prairie ground, the old churchyards and the rest — will carry what its own record finds. The one township-frame figure worth printing beside this article is a boundary: Sumption Prairie Cemetery, in Greene Township beyond the census place's line — the burial record's seat, conformed at assembly; the prairie's name ran into Clay in the period record, and the Cemeteries leg prints both attributions — carries 88 burials in the same index — the prairie churchyard's veterans, against the memorial park's 183 — a measure of how the valley's burying, veterans' included, has moved in a century from the churchyards to the memorial parks. The Cemetery leg owns the grounds; this section owns only the count, and prints it.

Sources:

1. The St. Joseph County veterans index (3,388 rows, read whole) — the St. Joseph Valley Memorial Park rows counted (183) and partitioned by printed service; the Sumption Prairie rows (88); the Harris Prairie name searched, empty.