The county's whole: how many went out

1861–1865 · THE SERVED TOTAL, WITH ITS METHOD STATED

The Roll of Honor in this section counts the county's Civil War dead — 230 printed entries, 229 distinct names. That is the roll. This entry is the other number: the whole number who served from St. Joseph County, living and dead together.

The total the record carries: Chapman's county history, at the head of the military chapter compiled from the Adjutant General's reports, states it in the form the nineteenth century used: "More than two thousand of as brave men as ever handled a musket or drew a sword went out from this county." The method behind the figure is the chapter itself — a roster compilation, company by company and regiment by regiment, from the state Adjutant General's reports, of every organization in which county men were credited: the three-months and three-years companies of the 9th, the full companies and partial rosters set out in this addendum's regimental entry, the hundred-days men of the 138th, the one-year men of the 155th, the cavalry company and the battery. Chapman's "more than two thousand" is a narrative total laid over that compilation, not a tabulated sum, and it is printed at exactly that strength: the county's served total as its own history states it, two thousand and more.

The Mishawaka share, and the quota record: The city's commissioned history gives Mishawaka's own slice of the whole with a precision the county total lacks: of the Mishawaka men who were three-year volunteers in the 9th, 48th and 87th regiments, De Kever counts 248, of whom 14 were killed in action, 48 died of wounds or disease, and two died at Andersonville — the 138th's hundred-days Company H and the city's men scattered through the county's other companies standing outside that count. The same history records the quota fact that belongs with any served total: Mishawaka "always provided enough volunteers to meet its draft quotas, and no Mishawaka or Penn Township man was drafted during the Civil War." The county's two thousand went out, on this ground at least, as volunteers.

The named gap: What no source reached supplies is the tabulated figure behind Chapman's round one — the county's credits call by call, as the Provost Marshal General's enrollment machinery and the Indiana Adjutant General's quota tables kept them, counting three-months men, hundred-days men, substitutes and re-enlistments each by the rules of their call. Until that table is read, "more than two thousand" is the total, and any more precise number would be an invention. The settler is named: the Indiana Adjutant General's reports for 1865–66 and the Provost Marshal General's county credit records, at the Indiana State Archives.

Sources:

1. Charles C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), Chapter VII — the "more than two thousand" total and the roster compilation that is its method.
2. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the 248 Mishawaka three-year volunteers and their losses, and the quota record: every quota met by volunteers, no Mishawaka or Penn Township man drafted.
3. The Roll of Honor count as it stands in this section — 230 printed entries, 229 distinct — the dead, distinguished here from the served.