Soldiers before the city: the Revolution's and 1812's men who came later

1775–1843 · THE PRE-CITY SERVICE ROLL, AT ITS TRUE SIZE

No white inhabitant lived on this ground during the Revolution or the War of 1812 — Timothy Edward Howard's county history says so in terms — so Mishawaka's share in those wars is a roll of men who served elsewhere and came later. It is a county roll before it is a city one, and it is printed here at that size, each man's later residence stated as the record gives it.

The Revolution — two men in Howard, three pensioners in 1840, seven graves in the DAR's count: Howard (1907) names two soldiers of the Revolution who "lived here for some time, and their bodies now repose in the old City Cemetery; they were Peter Roof, senior, and Isaac Ross." The old City Cemetery is South Bend's, and both men's later residence was South Bend's ground — boundary-printed here as the county's, not absorbed as Mishawaka's. Roof, born in January 1753 (the Marshall County biographical record gives January 6 in the library's telling), died at South Bend on October 25, 1834 — one library account carries the softer form that he lived "until 1831 (though some records say he lived until 1834)," and both stand — and his is the first recorded burial in South Bend's City Cemetery. Ross was born May 7, 1760, at Westfield, New Jersey, and was laid in the same cemetery in 1843. The federal Census of Pensioners of 1840, taken under the Secretary of War's report, lists exactly three pensioners for St. Joseph County: Isaac Ross, age 80, residing with Isaac Ross; James Wilson, age 59, residing with James Wilson; and John Mead, age 75, residing with Eli B. Mead. Ross corroborates Howard. Wilson and Mead appear in no veteran list Howard prints, and Roof, dead six years, is absent as a dead man would be; the census is printed here whole beside Howard's two, and the difference between the rolls is left standing, unexplained by any source reached. The Daughters of the American Revolution's later marker work counts the county's Revolutionary dead higher than Howard did: a bronze plaque dedicated at the Old Court House in 1982 memorializes seven Revolutionary soldiers buried in St. Joseph County, and in 1983 the grave of a Revolutionary soldier the marker record names as Mead Hurd was marked in Mishawaka's own City Cemetery — the one Revolutionary grave the marker record places on Mishawaka ground. Hurd is not in Howard's roll and not in the 1840 pensioner list under that name, and the plaque's full seven names were not reached; the settler is the plaque itself and the St. Joseph County DAR's marker file. He is printed at the marker record's strength, no higher.

The War of 1812 — Howard's seventeen: Of the second war Howard writes that "several soldiers of the war of 1812, likewise resided in the county, many of them amongst our prominent early settlers," and names them: Thomas J. Allen, John B. Chandonai, Daniel Cottrell, Ransom Curtis, Theophilus Case, Archibald Defrees, Christopher W. Emerick, Daniel Heck, Christopher Lenz, Artemus Johnson, Peter Johnson, John Mack Senior, Jesse K. Platz, Jehu Meredith, Peter Roof Junior, Claybourne Smith and John Sample. Chandonai, of Potawatomi descent, served as a trusted scout for Generals Lewis Cass and William Henry Harrison. Howard draws one boundary himself, and it is kept: Alexis Coquillard "was also engaged in the service of General Harrison's army, although he was not an enlisted soldier, being indeed but a boy at the time of the war of 1812." Howard's frame for all seventeen is the county — prominent early settlers of St. Joseph County — and no source read carries any one of them to a residence on Mishawaka or Penn Township ground specifically. The roll is therefore printed as the county's roll, which is its true size: seventeen named men of 1812 who later lived in this county, two named men of the Revolution buried at South Bend, three pensioners on the federal list of 1840, and one Revolutionary grave marked, a century and a half later, in Mishawaka's own cemetery.

Sources:

1. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 2, "Other Early Wars" — the two Revolutionary soldiers, the seventeen men of 1812, Chandonai's scouting, and the Coquillard boundary.
2. A Census of Pensioners for Revolutionary or Military Services (1841), St. Joseph County, Indiana — Wilson, Ross and Mead, with their ages and households.
3. St. Joseph County Public Library, local history news (November 11, 2022) — Roof the first recorded burial in South Bend City Cemetery, Ross born May 7, 1760, died 1843, and the 1831/1834 uncertainty in Roof's death year.
4. Pictorial and Biographical Memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties and the Marshall County biographical record — Peter Roof born January 1753, died at South Bend October 25, 1834.
5. St. Joseph County chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, historical site markers list — the 1982 Old Court House plaque to seven Revolutionary soldiers buried in the county, and the 1983 marking of Mead Hurd's grave in Mishawaka City Cemetery.