Camp Rose · two regiments organized on the fairgrounds

1862

In the summer of 1862 South Bend was a regimental rendezvous: On the county fairgrounds the city kept Camp Rose, and there the 73rd Indiana Infantry was organized and mustered into United States service on 16 August 1862. The regiment was raised across the 9th Congressional District — some 1,010 men recruited in about three weeks from Lake, Porter, LaPorte, St. Joseph, Marshall and Cass counties — and St. Joseph County's own full company in it was Company G. Its colonel, Gilbert Hathaway, was killed at Blount's Farm on 2 May 1863, on Streight's Raid; the regiment fought at Perryville and Stones River, lost 241 men in all — three officers and forty-one enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, and 191 to disease — and mustered out on 1 July 1865.

Eleven days after the 73rd mustered in, the rendezvous produced a second regiment: the 87th Indiana, organized at South Bend on 28 August and mustered in on 31 August 1862 with 945 men — 1,262 served in it across the war — under Colonel Kline G. Shryock, with St. Joseph County represented in Company K and elsewhere in its ranks. The 87th marched with the western armies through Chickamauga, Atlanta and Savannah, lost 283 men, and mustered out on 10 June 1865. The Adjutant General's list carries a third regiment, the 99th Indiana, as organized at South Bend, three of its companies from Indianapolis. Beyond the three regiments, the county's men filled companies in the 9th, 15th, 29th, 48th, 138th and 155th Indiana regiments, the 12th Cavalry and the 21st Battery, as the county history's rosters give them. The regiments' campaigns belong to the Wars record; what belongs here is the standing fact: in a single month of 1862 this county seat organized and dispatched two full infantry regiments from its own fairgrounds.

Sources:

1. National Park Service, Civil War Battle Unit Details (Dyer's Compendium) — the 73rd Indiana: organized at South Bend, mustered in 16 August 1862, the district recruiting ground, Hathaway killed 2 May 1863, the loss figures, mustered out 1 July 1865; and the 87th Indiana: organized at South Bend, mustered in 31 August 1862 with 945 men, 1,262 in all, the loss figures, mustered out 10 June 1865.
2. Chapman, History of St. Joseph County (1880), ch. VI — Camp Rose on the county fairgrounds, Company G as St. Joseph County's company in the 73rd, Company K and the county's representation in the 87th, and the county companies in the 9th, 15th, 29th, 48th, 138th and 155th regiments, the 12th Cavalry and the 21st Battery.
3. Indiana Historical Society finding aids and the Indiana Adjutant General's regimental list — the 99th Indiana carried as organized at South Bend, three companies from Indianapolis.