Draft boards and recruiting: the machinery stood in South Bend

Item 10 — Selective Service as an institution, 1917–18 and 1940–45, at published strength

Olive Township's men were registered, classified and called by boards they had to travel to — the county's Selective Service machinery was seated in South Bend in both world wars. The published frame for 1917–18 is the National Archives' own description of the system (Microfilm Publication M1509, the World War I draft registration cards): 4,648 local boards nationwide; local boards were established for each county or similar subdivision, and for each 30,000 persons, approximately, in each city or county over that population; the boards "were charged with the registration, determination of order, and serial numbers, classification, call, and entrainment of draftees." Indiana's arrangement in that publication is printed board by board, and St. Joseph County's boards are exactly the pattern the item predicts: two city boards — "South Bend City # 1" and "South Bend City # 2" — and one county board, "St. Joseph County," whose cards the publication lists in its own alphabetical runs. A township man of Olive therefore registered under the county board or a South Bend city board; there was no Olive Township board, and the registration cards themselves are arranged, in the Archives' words, by county — in rural areas a registrant's card is found knowing "the county in which he registered." The township's own First World War record agrees with the geography: its Gold Star men enlisted at South Bend (Swanson "enlisted in U.S. For 1940–45 the published record reached carries the same structure at national strength — the second war's Selective Service again worked through local boards seated at county and city level, and the township's men registered through the county's boards — but no pass has read a St. Joseph County board list for the Second World War at the strength M1509 gives the first. That half therefore prints at frame size, with its settler named: the Selective Service System's local-board records for St. Joseph County, 1940–45 (National Archives, Record Group 147), read board by board, will settle the county's 1940s board numbers and seats as M1509 settles 1917–18. Recruiting as a standing institution prints one modern line, from the Guard record already worked: the county's present Army National Guard recruiting stations stand at 1901 Kemble Avenue, South Bend, and 1023 West Edison Road, Mishawaka — none in New Carlisle, in 2026 as in 1917.

Sources:

1. National Archives, Microfilm Publication M1509, World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards — local-board structure (4,648 local boards; county and 30,000-population city boards; registration, classification, call and entrainment); Indiana listing: South Bend City # 1, South Bend City # 2, and St. Joseph County boards.
2. Banked: Indiana Gold Star Honor Roll (1921), SWANSON and PASZKIET entries (enlistments at South Bend) — Wars & Military Service, at pointer size.
3. Military Department of Indiana, "Indiana National Guard in Your Community" — present recruiting stations, South Bend and Mishawaka; none in New Carlisle.
4. Named settler for the 1940–45 board list: Selective Service records, St. Joseph County local boards, National Archives Record Group 147.