The scout councils: two successions, in line

St. Joseph Valley Council to LaSalle Council; Singing Sands into Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana-Michiana, 2008

Why the councils stand here: The camps stand in the family-entertainment record — Camp Tamarack at the Wood Lake Scout Reservation carried whole, and Camp Ella J. Logan at anchor size — and are pointed to there. What the charities record lacked is the councils themselves: the corporate line through which Mishawaka's troops and packs have been chartered for a century, merger by merger. Both lines are seated at South Bend and Fort Wayne respectively; Mishawaka's part in them is its troops, and the troop record is printed at the end, at its true size.

The Boy Scout line: The succession's order is documented in a single life: the South Bend Tribune's obituary of William Fox Sr. (29 May 2008), an Eagle Scout of 1936 and a 65-year member of the executive board, lists his council service across the St. Joseph Valley Council, the Tri-Valley Council, the Northern Indiana Council, and "the current LaSalle Council," in that order — the St. Joseph Valley Council being the council of the 1930s and 1940s, named again on a council board in a Dartmouth obituary of April 1944. The dated mergers begin later. On 1 April 1972, on the Granger Troop 555 history kept by Dennis Laffin, the Tri-Valley Council — its Order of the Arrow lodge the White Beaver Lodge 182 — merged with the Pottawattomi Council to the west and the Pioneer Trails Council to the east to form the Northern Indiana Council; in 1973 the council merged in the southern part of the Southwest Michigan Council — Niles, Buchanan, Berrien Springs, and Dowagiac — and the local district took the name Algonquian. The council's name was afterward changed to its present LaSalle Council name, and the lodge to Sakima Lodge 573; Laffin's history does not date the change, reference listings give the La Salle Council (No. 165) a founding of 1993, and a patch listing claims a 1991 merger with the Sawasabee District of the Southwest Michigan Council as the forming act — the three accounts stand unharmonized, as the record gives them. Two dates the record reached does not hold at all: the year the St. Joseph Valley Council took the Tri-Valley name, and the council's first chartering. The settling source for both is the council's own published history, the same source the banked camp article names for the council's earlier camping ground. The LaSalle Council stands today at 1340 South Bend Avenue, South Bend, in four districts — Algonquian, Dunes Moraine, Pioneer Trails, and Potawatomi — serving eight counties of northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan; in December 2024 the Michiana business press reported its membership growing five percent in 2024, a third straight year of growth, on a $1.35 million Lilly Endowment grant spread over three years.

The Girl Scout line: Mishawaka's Girl Scouts were chartered for half a century through the Singing Sands Council, the South Bend-seated council of this end of the state — a council in being by November 1958, when its federal tax exemption was ruled, seated in its later years at 3620 Deahl Court, South Bend. In 2008, on the council's own archives page, Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana-Michiana was formed by the merger of four legacy councils: Lakeland, Limberlost, Singing Sands, and Tribal Trails — the banked camp article renders the first of these as the Indiana Lakeland Council — following the national realignment the Girl Scouts of the USA board adopted on 26 August 2006. The merged council covers twenty northern Indiana counties, St. Joseph among them, with Berrien and Cass counties in Michigan; its headquarters are at Fort Wayne, with a service center at Granger, as the banked fragment's closing directory carries. Its resident camp is Camp Ella J. Logan on Lake Dewart at Syracuse, founded in 1928 and carried at anchor size in the family-entertainment record: 220 acres in the council's current postings, 200 acres with 3,759 feet of shoreline in the national camp directory of 2015, both figures printed as their sources give them.

Mishawaka's troop record, at its size: That Mishawaka had troops and packs under each of these councils, across the whole century, is as certain as anything in this record — and their own records, troop by troop, were not reached. The banked charities fragment already banks that absence as a named gap in its youth article, and it is not enlarged here: the settling sources are the LaSalle Council's archives at South Bend and the Girl Scout council's historian and archives, the latter the same settler the banked camp article names for the pre-merger camp course.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, obituary of William Fox Sr., 29 May 2008 (Legacy.com) — the four councils in succession order in one man's service; his Eagle Scout year 1936; the LaSalle Council's address at 1340 South Bend Avenue.
2. Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, April 1944 — a St. Joseph Valley Council board member named in a South Bend alumnus's obituary, dating the name to the 1940s.
3. Dennis Laffin, Granger Troop 555 history (St. Joseph County scouting history pages) — the 1 April 1972 three-council merger forming the Northern Indiana Council, the 1973 Southwest Michigan merger and the Algonquian district name, White Beaver Lodge 182 and Sakima Lodge 573, the later change to the LaSalle name, undated.
4. Council reference listings — La Salle Council (No. 165) "founded 1993," and a patch listing's claim of a 1991 Sawasabee merger, printed against Laffin's account and not harmonized; Michiana Business News, 4 December 2024, for the council's 2024 growth and the Lilly Endowment grant.
5. Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana-Michiana, council archives page (girlscoutsnorthernindiana-michiana.org) — the 2008 formation from Lakeland, Limberlost, Singing Sands, and Tribal Trails; national accounts for the 26 August 2006 realignment and the twenty-county territory; tax-exempt directories for Singing Sands Council Inc. of South Bend and its November 1958 ruling.
6. 2015 National Girl Scout Camp Directory — Camp Ella J. Logan at Syracuse, 200 acres, 3,759 feet of Dewart Lake shoreline; the banked family-entertainment fragment for the camp's 1928 founding and 220 acres, and the banked charities fragment for the Granger service center and the banked troop-record gap.