Houghton Post No. 128 as an order: the Grand Army in Mishawaka

Mustered 1883 · closed 1936 · shared size — the post whole stands in the Veterans section

The division, stated: Houghton Post of the Grand Army of the Republic stands whole in this history's Veterans section — its Department of Indiana dates, 1883–1936, from the department's own records as indexed by the state archives; its formation out of South Bend's Auten Post; its naming for Captain James Houghton, killed at Shiloh; the Relief Corps question beside it — and that record is not re-dug here. What this section carries is the post at shared size as what it also was: a fraternal order, the lodge age's patriotic order, with a charter, a ritual of its own, elected officers, a hall it borrowed from another order, and an end that came by mortality and not by failure. Howard's roster of 1907 gives the post its officers in the same form as every lodge in the list — Manuel Fisher, post commander; Charles Frank, adjutant — and the 1921 directory gives it its meeting place: the Odd Fellows Temple at 204 North Main, the veterans of the Civil War meeting in the rooms of Monitor Lodge, two orders under one roof in the upstairs city. The Grand Army's public rite was Memorial Day, and the post's graves-and-monument work is carried in the Wars and Veterans records where it belongs; here the point is the form — a chartered post of a national order, mustered in 1883 when its members were in their forties, still officered in 1907 and meeting in 1921, and closed in the department's index in 1936, when the men who could fill its chairs were gone. The final national encampment of the order came in 1949; Mishawaka's post had surrendered its charter thirteen years before, as its members died — the one order in this record whose dissolution needs no economic explanation.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. I (1907), p. 345 — Houghton Post No. 128 in the roster, with its commander and adjutant; read first-hand.
2. R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend City Directory, 1921 — the post meeting in the Odd Fellows Temple, 204 N. Main; as carried in the Private Clubs section.
3. The Veterans section of this history — the post's dates (1883–1936) from the Indiana Archives' index of the Department of Indiana's records, its formation from Auten Post, and its naming, where the post stands whole.