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1861 – 1865 · Harris Township, Section 13 and the Irvin place
The enlistment: Henry E. Hain was two years old when his parents brought him to South Bend, and South Bend was his home until 1859, when he came to Harris Township to work for Ed Irvin — E. M. Irvin, with W. Irvin one of the township's "extensive farmers" on Chapman's settler roll, and on his biographer's word "the most prominent farmer of this township." In 1861, Howard's biography says, Hain enlisted for service in the Civil war "with twelve other employes of Mr. Irvin" — thirteen men off one Harris Township farm, in one enlistment, becoming members of the Twenty-ninth Indiana Volunteer Infantry under Colonel John F. Miller of South Bend. No other single enlistment from either township is documented at anything like that size; the Irvin farm's thirteen is the largest party this ground sent to any war in a body, and it is the centerpiece of the townships' Civil War record.
Hain's course, whole: the regiment was assigned to the Army of the Cumberland, and Hain "took part in the battles of Shiloh and Corinth, also many minor engagements, but after a year and a half of service he contracted typhoid fever and left Chattanooga for his home." His war was not over. He "later assisted in recruiting the Twenty-first Indiana Battery and accompanied it to Indianapolis, where its officers were chosen, Captain Andrews being placed in command and Mr. Hain its sutler, continuing in that capacity until the battery was disbanded at Covington and ordered to the Department of the Cumberland." Then he came home and resumed work for Irvin. On 1 February 1864 he left St. Joseph, Missouri, with a mule team for Idaho, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, wintered 1865–66 in the Blue Mountains, and reached home in November 1866 by way of San Francisco, Panama and New York — and went back to the Irvin farm, where his connection with that family ran twenty-nine years in all. He married Maximelia Baker in 1867, and for the last twenty years of the record he farmed eight acres in Section 13 of Harris Township, "originally a part of the Irvin place," known as the Sycamore Fruit Farm — "for on his land stands the only sycamore tree between Granger and South Bend."
The rank the biography does not mention, printed whole: Howard's first volume carries the 29th's county officers and prints, among the regiment's promotions, "Henry E. Hain, from second lieutenant to first lieutenant" — in a promotions list whose other names (John J. Traub, Robert Shields, Alden Whitney, Calvin R. Stillson, John Taylor) are the sergeants and corporals of Company F, the company Hain's thirteen joined. The biography tells a course of sickness, sutler's service and farm work and says nothing of a lieutenancy. The file prints both: the roster record that he held and rose in a commission, and the biography that omits it. Whether the commission came before his typhoid sent him home, the record read does not say; Adjutant General Terrell's printed roster for Company F, 29th Indiana (vol. 2 of his report, at the Indiana State Library) is the settling source.
The other twelve: of the thirteen who walked off the Irvin place together, the record names one man certainly — Hain himself. A second, William H. Augustine of Company F, is entered in the next article as an identification on converging evidence. The remaining eleven stand in this section as a counted party whose names the record reached does not separate from the company's roll; the settling sources are Terrell's Company F roster, which prints residences, and the 1860 census of Harris Township, which prints the Irvin household's hands.
Sources:
- Howard (1907), vol. 2 — the Hain sketch whole: the coming to Harris Township in 1859, the enlistment with twelve other Irvin employees, Shiloh and Corinth, the typhoid, the battery sutlership, the western journey, the Sycamore Fruit Farm.
- Howard (1907), vol. 1 — the 29th Indiana's county officers and the promotions list carrying Hain's name.
- Chapman (1880), Harris Township chapter — W. and E. M. Irvin in the settler roll.