The Grand Army: seven posts in one county

1879 – 1936, and the camp that carries the name today

The department and its second founding: The Grand Army of the Republic was founded at Decatur, Illinois, in April 1866, and an Indiana department was organized the same year, but the state's first Grand Army faded in the early 1870s. The department that lasted was built in 1879, and its first charters ran in a numbered sequence the Indiana State Library still prints: Morton Post No. 1 at Terre Haute, then Brazil, Lafayette, Covington, Greensburg, Wabash and Crawfordsville — and eighth, Auten Post No. 8, of South Bend. The department's records program notes an earlier South Bend post of the first organization, a Post No. 64 carried on the Department of Illinois' rolls and "known only by its number," with a pointer to Auten Post as its successor in the record. At its height the Indiana department counted more than 590 posts; seven of them stood in St. Joseph County.

The county roster, whole: The Department of Indiana's post records, as indexed by the Indiana Archives and Records Administration from the department's own files, give St. Joseph County seven posts. Auten Post No. 8, South Bend, 1879 to 1936 and beyond — the county's senior post and the city's anchor. Deacon Post No. 115, New Carlisle, 1882–1919. Houghton Post No. 128, Mishawaka, 1883–1936 — Mishawaka's own post, printed here because the county roster is one record; its story belongs to Mishawaka's build. Albion A. Williams Post No. 197, North Liberty, 1883–1913; the department index also carries the number under the name Joseph Bowen, with the note that the post's name was Albion A. Williams and the Bowen entry doubtful — the conflict stands in the index itself and is printed as it stands. Jesse Coppock Post No. 378, Walkerton, 1884–1923. Notre Dame Post No. 569, at Notre Dame, 1897?–1916 — a post of the university community, its opening year uncertain in the department's own index. And Norman Eddy Post No. 579, South Bend, 1897–1930, the city's second post, raised a generation after Auten by men who wanted a post of their own. No post hall survives in the reachable record for any of the seven; the posts met in rented rooms and public halls, and their meeting places are a named gap in this record.

Auten and its namesake: Auten Post carried the name of Private John Auten of South Bend, whom the department itself honored as the first Union soldier from Indiana killed in 1861. In May 1912, at the department encampment held in South Bend that year, the Indiana Grand Army struck a badge with Auten's likeness and issued it in his honor — the department's own history, preserved by the Sons of Union Veterans, records the striking. Auten lies in South Bend City Cemetery, where his grave is one of the lots the Common Council placed under perpetual care at public expense in 1941. The cross-reference belongs to the War Heroes record; what belongs here is that the county's first soldier's name was, for fifty-seven years, the name over the door of its first veterans organization.

The encampment city: Twice in the Grand Army's Indiana life, the whole department came to South Bend. The seventeenth annual encampment of the Department of Indiana was held in the city in 1896, and its surplus — more than $900, left after the encampment's bills were paid — became, by resolution of its executive committee under Edwin Nicar, the nucleus of the fund that built the Soldiers' Monument on the courthouse square; the monument's own entry below carries that story. The department returned in 1912 for the encampment at which the Auten badge was struck. South Bend was, in those years, one of the places Indiana's veterans gathered by right of the city's standing in the order.

The Eddy Post and the Relief Corps: The Norman Eddy Post No. 579 took the name of Colonel Norman Eddy of South Bend — congressman in the 1850s and colonel of the 48th Indiana, the regiment the county histories call the one nearest the county's heart; his service is carried in the People and War Heroes records. The post's own monument work stands in City Cemetery, where its money raised the 1914 soldiers' monument described below. Beside the posts stood the Woman's Relief Corps, the Grand Army's auxiliary: the South Bend News-Times' society columns in November 1918 record the Norman Eddy W.R.C. holding its installation in the corps rooms, and it was the Woman's Relief Corps that erected the 1911 monument "to the unknown soldier and sailor dead" in City Cemetery — the statue whose travels end, below, at the Military Honor Park.

The succession: The Grand Army's posts all closed as their members died — Williams in 1913, Notre Dame in 1916, Deacon in 1919, Coppock in 1923, Eddy in 1930, and Auten and Houghton last, in 1936 and after. The name, however, came back. On 22 September 2018 the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War chartered John Auten Camp No. 8 in South Bend — the camp taking both the soldier's full name and the old post's number — with the chartering ceremonies held, in the department newsletter's account, on the steps of the old St. Joseph County Courthouse and at the grave of Private John Auten in City Cemetery. The camp is active today: it presents a Civil War-era Memorial Day program at Bowman Cemetery, on Miami Street, each May, and it works the "last soldier" grave-markings of the neighboring counties. The Grand Army's institutional line in South Bend thus runs unbroken in form, if not in membership, from 1879 to the present.

Sources:

1. Indiana Archives and Records Administration, finding aid to the records of the Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Indiana (23 August 1982), vol. 2, the post index sorted by county — the seven St. Joseph County posts with numbers, seats and year ranges, including the Williams/Bowen double entry.
2. Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Department of Indiana, post listings (suvcwin.org) — Auten No. 8 (1879–1936+), Coppock No. 378, Notre Dame No. 569 (1897?–1916), Eddy No. 579 (1897–1930); and Argus E. Ogborn's history of the Grand Army in Indiana, preserved on the same site — the 1912 Auten badge struck for the South Bend encampment.
3. Indiana State Library, "The Grand Army of the Republic" (Indiana State Library blog) — the 1879 charter sequence of the first twelve posts, Auten Post No. 8 of South Bend among them, and the department's eventual 592 posts.
4. SUVCW GAR Records Program, Indiana and Illinois post summaries (garrecords.org) — the earlier South Bend Post No. 64 on the Department of Illinois' rolls, "see Auten Post, No. 8 (Indiana)."
5. The Indiana Legion, newsletter of the SUVCW Department of Indiana, issue 3-18 (2018) — the chartering of John Auten Camp No. 8 at South Bend on 22 September 2018, on the courthouse steps and at Auten's grave; the camp's Memorial Day program at Bowman Cemetery as listed in the South Bend Tribune, May 2026.
6. South Bend News-Times, 30 November 1918 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — the Norman Eddy W.R.C. installation.