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THE REGIME FELL ON TOWNSHIPS OF THIS EXACT KIND; ITS LOCAL BITE IS NIL AT RECORD STRENGTH
Liberty Township was Pennsylvania-German country — "mostly of German ancestry, or what are called Pennsylvania Dutch" (Chapman, 1880); "chiefly of the sturdy Pennsylvania German stock" (Howard, 1907). Its German institutions on the eve of war: a German Lutheran church and two Dunkard (German Baptist Brethren) churches in the country, and a German Baptist congregation in town (the banked religion file). The state regime that fell on such townships stands at official and press strength: the Indiana State Council of Defense declared that "the use of German as any part of a church service may rightfully be regarded as un-American" (Indiana Historical Bureau, History Note #27) — a state body's ruling aimed squarely at congregations of this township's exact kind; whether it was enforced against, or obeyed by, any Liberty Township congregation is not printed by any carrier reached, and stands as residue. On 25 February 1919 — three months after the Armistice — Governor Goodrich signed Senator McCray's act forbidding the teaching of German in elementary schools, public, private, parochial and institutional, repealing the 1869 law that had provided for German instruction on parental petition, penalties to 100 dollars and/or six months (the Senate Journal's record, via Hoosier State Chronicles): the Senate passed it 48–1, and the lone no vote was Senator Charles A. Hagerty of South Bend — this county's own senator. The act's township bite, tested: the banked schools file establishes that the township's German Lutheran church carried no school any history attaches to it, and no parochial school of any kind stood in the township — so the act's proven local effect here is nil at the record's strength; what it ended was a legal possibility, not a documented township classroom, and it prints as such, not inflated. Greenough supplies the record's own counterweight: the First Loan's early returns showed German communities subscribing heavily, and St. Joseph County — German townships and all — led the nation per capita. No loyalty investigation, name change, or disloyalty case naming a Liberty Township resident appears in any carrier reached — a tested negative, printed as one, its settlers (the town and county-seat papers of 1917–19; the congregations' own records; the county council's files) named in the note. The wartime clock stands at pointer only: the federal Standard Time Act of 19 March 1918 created daylight saving as a war measure, a national fact; no carrier reached prints its local observance for this township, and the county's time-zone course is the county file's article.
Banked Churches & Religion and Schools; IHB History Note #27 (via Allen County INGenWeb compilation); Journal of the Indiana State Senate (1919), via Hoosier State Chronicles; Greenough (1922), First Loan dispatches.