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1861 – 1865 · the state-line ground
The frame: this ground lies against the Michigan line, and its families' farms straddled it; the record shows the townships' men in Michigan and even Colorado colors as readily as in Indiana's. Three courses stand in the People leg of this build at full size and are pointed to here — John W. Griffith of Harris Township, who enlisted 1 September 1861 in Company L, 2nd Michigan Cavalry, Colonel Phil Sheridan's regiment, and served four years to a day through Booneville, Perryville, Corinth, Chickamauga, Franklin, Knoxville and Nashville before making his farm in Section 10 of Harris; and John A. Zaehnle of Harris Township, whose war was a paymaster's clerk's desk at Louisville, Bowling Green and Nashville and a sutler's store after it. The third name of the Michigan set is this section's own work.
Hiram McMichael — settled to the roster line: the People leg carries him at one clause's strength, and prints him — rightly — as the township's war dead on a single sentence inside his brother-in-law's sketch: Elizabeth (McMichael) Griffith's brother Hiram "died in the war," in the 6th Michigan Infantry, after three months' service, from Niles. This pass joins the clause to the roster. Michigan's official roll of its soldiers (the Michigan Soldiers and Sailors volumes, the "Brown Books," as compiled in the state roster project) carries him in Company A, 6th Michigan Infantry: "McMichael, Hiram — Niles — 21." Name, regiment, home and the family's ground converge: the McMichaels — Samuel and Nancy (Smith) McMichael — were Harris Township pioneers, Elizabeth was born in the township in 1841, and Company A was the regiment's Niles company, the natural muster for a state-line farm boy whose post office and market lay across the line. The 6th Michigan mustered at Kalamazoo in August 1861 and went east to Baltimore; a death after three months' service falls in the autumn of 1861, in the regiment's first sickness season — but where Hiram McMichael died, and of what, and where he lies, no record read says, and the file does not infer it. He stands as the townships' one named Civil War death in the biographical record: a private of Company A, 6th Michigan Infantry, age twenty-one, home Niles, dead in the war at three months' service, on the convergence of Howard's clause and the Michigan roster. The settling sources are the Sixth Infantry's own volume of the Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers (vol. 6 of the Brown Books) and his compiled military service record — both named in this section's pull list for Prime.
John Belledin — the Colorado service: Belledin was born in Erie County, Pennsylvania, on 16 December 1837, son of Joseph and Barbara (Becker) Belledin, and was two years old when the family settled on a farm on the Kankakee river west of South Bend — the county's ground, though west of this section's townships. At twenty-three he "joined the tide of gold seekers to Colorado," and worked nine years between Pike's Peak and the Missouri river. "During his residence in the west, in 1863, he enlisted for service in the Civil war, joining Company C, Second Colorado Volunteer Infantry, and during his military service, which covered a period of about nine months, he lost the sight of his right eye." He came home to the county in December 1869, bought his Clay Township farm in 1870 — eighty acres in Section 16, then the old homestead of 112 acres on Section 9, 192 acres in one body — married Elizabeth Hoose in 1874, and "now draws a small pension in compensation for the valiant service which he rendered his country during the Civil war." His tie is stated exactly: his service was Colorado's, his boyhood and his forty years after it were this county's, and his farm and pension were Clay Township's. His father Joseph's Mexican War loss stands in that war's article above.
Sources:
- Howard (1907), vol. 2 — the Griffith sketch (the McMichael clause); the Belledin sketch whole.
- Michigan Soldiers and Sailors (State of Michigan, 1915), as compiled in the Michigan in the War roster project — Company A, 6th Michigan Infantry: McMichael, Hiram, of Niles, age 21.
- The People leg of this build — the Griffith and Zaehnle courses whole.