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1866 – 1936 · the county count, closed from the state's finding aid
The Grand Army of the Republic's St. Joseph County count closes at seven distinct posts — and Lakeville is not among them. The carrier is the Indiana Archives' own finding aid for the state GAR records, whose appendix prints every Indiana post sorted by county; the county's block was opened whole and every row read. Eight rows stand for seven posts: Auten Post No. 8, South Bend (1879–1936+); Deacon Post No. 115, New Carlisle (1882–1919) — the county's smallest-town post, in this build's smallest neighbour; Houghton Post No. 128, Mishawaka (1883–1936); Williams Post No. 197, North Liberty (1883–1913); Coppock Post No. 378, Walkerton (1884–1923); Notre Dame Post No. 569 (c. 1897–1916); and Eddy Post No. 579, South Bend (1897–1930). The eighth row is No. 197 entered twice, once as "Bowen" and once as "Williams," and the table itself resolves it — the Bowen entry is marked "doubtful" and the note under it names the post Williams — so the print stands as the table gives it: one post, two names in the record, the conflict registered and the table's own disposition printed with it. Every number was cross-checked against the Sons of Union Veterans' post lists, which confirm each; the one earlier "seven posts" claim for this county, made at floor size elsewhere in this project, is confirmed exactly. The Lakeville test ran at the same strength: a full-text search of the finding aid's whole second volume for "Lakeville" returns no match, and no post chartered in Lakeville or Union Township appears in any list worked. There was no GAR post in this township, at county-table strength — the township's veterans, Jacob Wynn among them (a Company K corporal who rests in Lakeville Cemetery), held their memberships where the posts were: the county seat's, and the nearer small towns' at North Liberty and Walkerton. Which post the township's men actually joined stands as a named gap — the posts' descriptive books and files at the state archives, for Nos. 197, 378, and 8 in that order, are its settlers — and is not guessed.
Two of the county posts carry facts this section prints at pointer because they govern the county's memory geography. Auten Post's own start prints in two forms that stand unmerged: the state tables give 1879–1936+, while the post's camp history carries the post as organised in 1866 under the order's earlier arrangements — a first county post chartered three years before the department reorganised — and named for Private John Auten of the 9th Indiana, killed at Laurel Hill on 10 July 1861, "the first soldier killed in the Civil War from St. Joseph County": a Portage Township man's name on the county seat's post, the county's first-martyr tradition matching the county histories' own (in the wars file). And the Grand Army's stone-and-ground face in this township is not a post hall but a cemetery: Lakeville Cemetery's nine Civil War soldiers, Howard's roll, worked whole in this build's cemeteries file — the ground where the township's GAR-era memory physically rests.