Company F first · the 157th Indiana and the Spanish-American War

1898

In the spring of 1898 South Bend's company was the first in Indiana through the door: When the call came for the Spanish-American War, the state's 3rd Regiment of the National Guard entered federal service as the 157th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and its colonel was a South Bend man, George M. Studebaker of the wagon company. The regiment was drawn from the northern tier — companies from Knox, Fort Wayne (two), Goshen, North Manchester, Elkhart, South Bend, Angola, Waterloo, Auburn, Ligonier and Plymouth — and Company F, of South Bend, was the first company from Indiana to enter United States service. The regimental band was South Bend's too, a fact the Indianapolis News remarked on 2 May 1898. The 157th mustered in on 10 May 1898 at Camp Mount, Indianapolis, trained at Camp Thomas at Chickamauga, moved to Tampa and then to Fernandina, Florida, was furloughed on 10 September, and mustered out on 1 November 1898, never having served outside the United States. Its war was the camp diseases of that summer: Company F lost two men, Private Harry O. Perkins, who died at Fernandina on 20 August 1898, and Private Harry W. Herring, who died at Indianapolis on 17 October 1898, and they are named here as the official record of Indiana volunteers names them.

Sources:

1. Record of Indiana Volunteers in the Spanish-American War, 1898–99 (Indiana Adjutant General; archive.org) — the 157th Indiana's organization from the 3rd Regiment, Col. George M. Studebaker, Company F of South Bend first into United States service, the muster dates, and the company's two deaths, Perkins and Herring, with their dates and places.
2. Pratt, History of the National Guard of Indiana (1901) — the 3rd Regiment's organization of 2 July 1883 and its 1898 service, Camp Mount, Camp Thomas, Tampa and Fernandina, mustered out 1 November 1898 without foreign service.
3. Indianapolis News, 2 May 1898 — the regimental band as South Bend's.