The militia years: the county under the state militia law

Item 2 — the standing companies, from organization forward — NAMED GAP at company-name strength

Before there were regiments there was a legal obligation, and St. Joseph County stood inside it from the state's first general revision after the county was organized. Pratt's history of the National Guard of Indiana (1901), worked from the militia laws themselves, prints the general revision of 10 February 1831: the militia age was prescribed as eighteen to forty-five years; each company was entitled to from forty to 100 men; four to six companies composed a battalion, two battalions a regiment, three to six regiments a brigade. In that division of the state, St. Joseph County stood in the Twentieth Brigade of the Eighth Division, brigaded with Tippecanoe, Clinton, Carroll, Cass and Elkhart counties. That is the frame Olive Township's able-bodied men were enrolled under in the decade the town was platted — a paper brigade of six counties, not a town company. What the published record reached does NOT supply is the next step the item asks for: the county's own standing companies named, one by one, from organization forward. Howard's county history (1907) carries the county's military course in a single chapter — Chapter XIV, Military History, at pages 711 and following: I. Black Hawk (St. Joseph County troops and forts; Stanfield's reminiscences), II. Other Early Wars, III. The War for the Union (enlistments, the Roll of Honor, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Soldiers' Monument). The chapter's own table of contents, read whole, shows no separate pre-war militia-companies section: Howard treats the militia years inside the Black Hawk and early-wars narrative, the same ground Wars & Military Service already carries for 1832. The named-company roster therefore closes as a NAMED GAP, not a finding of absence: the settler is stated exactly — Howard (1907), volume 1, Chapter XIV, pages 711–716, read at the section in the archive.org / LDS Genealogy digitized text, together with Pratt (1901) company-by-company Guard history for any St. Joseph County company carried there. Until that section is read at the page, no company name is printed here, because none was verified.

Sources:

1. Pratt, William D., A History of the National Guard of Indiana (1901), the militia-law revision of 10 February 1831 — Eighth Division, Twentieth Brigade including St. Joseph County; company strength 40–100 — read in the LDS Genealogy digitized text.
2. Howard, Timothy Edward, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, vol. 1 (1907), contents of Chapter XIV, Military History, pp. 711 ff., read whole in the digitized text.
3. Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, "Militia" — the state's dual system after the 1830s (district militia obligation; independent volunteer companies from 1842), at state-frame strength.