The named companies of 1882 · South Bend Light Infantry and South Bend Veterans

1882–1883

When Indiana rebuilt its militia after the Civil War, South Bend stood in the first organization with two named companies: The Indiana Legion reorganization of 1882 gathered the state's independent companies into regiments, and the Military Department of Indiana's own history lists the South Bend Light Infantry and the South Bend Veterans among the named companies of that settlement. On 12 June 1882 the 1st Regiment, Indiana Legion, was organized from those independent companies, the South Bend Veterans among them — the constitution from which the Army's official lineage of the 152nd Infantry descends, so that the regiment carries a South Bend company in its founding muster. A year later the state's 3rd Regiment, Indiana National Guard, was organized by General Order No. 18 of 2 July 1883; it is that regiment — not the 1st — that South Bend's company entered federal service with in 1898, told below. The two threads are easy to blur and are kept separate here: the 1882 Legion settlement gives the city a founding company in the 152nd's line, and the 1883 regiment gives it the 1898 story. The 1882 regiment's own center of gravity soon moved away from the northern tier — reorganized in 1892 as the 2nd Regiment in the southern portion of the state — which is the early shape of the outcome the Guard entry below records: the 152nd's line endures, but not on this ground. What became of the Light Infantry company as a separate body, the record used here does not say.

Sources:

1. Military Department of Indiana, "History of the Indiana National Guard" (in.gov) — the 1882 Indiana Legion reorganization and its named independent companies, the South Bend Light Infantry and the South Bend Veterans among them.
2. U.S. Army Center of Military History, lineage and honors of the 152nd Infantry — the 1st Regiment, Indiana Volunteers, organized in the Indiana Legion 12 June 1882 from independent named companies located as follows, the South Bend Veterans at South Bend among them; the regiment's later stations are treated in the Guard entry below.
3. Pratt, History of the National Guard of Indiana (1901) — the 3rd Regiment, Indiana National Guard, organized by General Order No. 18, 2 July 1883, the parent regiment of the 157th Indiana Volunteers of 1898.