Soldiers Before the Town: the Revolution, 1812, and Mexico

1775 – 1848 · the pre-city service roll, tested

There were no white inhabitants in this territory during the periods of our first two wars — Howard (1907) states the frame himself, and it governs the whole question: any Revolutionary or War of 1812 veteran connected to this ground is necessarily a later settler, and the test is whether the record ties such a man to Union Township itself. Howard's county lists name two Revolutionary soldiers who lived in the county — Peter Roof, senior, and Isaac Ross, whose bodies "now repose in the old City Cemetery" at South Bend — and seventeen War of 1812 soldiers who resided in the county, from Thomas J. Allen and John B. Chandonai to John Sample. Not one of the nineteen is attributed to Union Township in the text read. Chapman's Union Township sketches offer ancestor mentions only: William Clenny's father "was in the war of 1812" and both his grandfathers "were in the war," but the father is unnamed and his own residence is not shown as this township; Andrew Huggart's wife's paternal grandfather "was a fifer in the war of the Revolution" — the settler is the granddaughter, not the veteran; Charles J. Sweezey's great-grandfather "was a soldier in the war of the Revolution," an ancestor only. James Moon's grandfather, a Quaker, "did not participate in the war," and Moon's father left Wayne County during the Indian troubles of 1812 — flight, not service. Howard's cemetery Roll of Honor gives Lakeville Cemetery no Revolutionary or 1812 heading and no such names (see the cemeteries file).

The Mexican War, for completeness of the nation's calls to 1848: Howard names thirteen county men who went — from Frank M. Anderson, whose name "heads the list," to Gen. Joseph P. Semmes — and attributes not one of them to Union Township. No Mexican War veteran, and no Spanish-American War soldier, is carried for Union Township in any carrier read, and the township's service record in the national wars properly begins in 1861, with a company of its own.