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1830s – November 2026 · Clay and Harris townships
The ground: the two townships this section serves were farm country for the whole of the nation's wars — Harris Township organized in the 1830s on the prairie that took Jacob Harris's name, Clay Township along the river and the state line — and the census-designated place that now covers their eastern ground is a postwar suburb that arrived after the Second World War. There was never a post, fort or camp on this ground in any war; the county's wartime camp stood at the county fairgrounds in South Bend, its name not established in the record consulted. The military geography of these townships is therefore a geography of departures: men walked or rode to South Bend, Mishawaka, LaPorte, Indianapolis — and, living against the Michigan line, some of them to Niles and Kalamazoo — and their names came home in other places' rolls.
The rule of this section: a serviceman is printed as Clay or Harris township's only where a record ties him to the township — a biography that places his home there, a roster read against a township family, an index that attributes him to the ground. Where the evidence converges short of proof, the entry prints as an identification and states its basis. Where the record gives the county only, the county is what prints, and the township's share is carried as a named gap with the source that would settle it. The dead are named from official and press record only.
Sources:
- Chapman, History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), ch. VII and the township chapters — the county's war narrative, rosters and Roll of Honor.
- Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vols. 1–2 — the war chapter with its enlistment lists, and the biographical sketches.
- The St. Joseph County veterans index (the county index compiled from the USGenWeb St. Joseph County pages, 3,388 rows) — township and town attributions, burials.