The Soldiers' Monument on the courthouse square

1899 – 1905, and standing today

The association: The monument began with the Grand Army's money and the Grand Army's men. When the Department of Indiana's 1896 encampment closed in South Bend with a surplus of more than $900, the encampment's executive committee chairman, Past Department Commander Edwin Nicar, carried resolutions setting the balance aside as the nucleus of a soldiers' monument fund. On 16 December 1899 the St. Joseph County Soldiers' Monument Association was formed, in its articles' words, to aid "in erecting at the county seat a monument or memorial hall to the soldiers and sailors of the civil war from St. Joseph county who fought and died in defense of the Union and the rights of man." Nicar was its president, Comrade W. E. Gorsuch its secretary and Frederick W. Mueller its treasurer; its directors joined the city's two great manufacturers, James Oliver and Clement Studebaker, with Leighton Pine, the Tribune's founder John B. Stoll, and the Very Reverend Andrew Morrissey of Notre Dame. Timothy E. Howard — the county's historian and a former chief justice of Indiana — told the story whole in his 1907 county history, from which this account is drawn.

The petition: The association's object was a county appropriation of $25,000, and the law required a petition signed by a majority of the county's voters. Committees of Auten Post had tried for the signatures repeatedly and failed. The man who got them was Past Post Commander John Hughes, who went out across the county and gathered more than 9,000 names — a majority of the electorate, carried in person. With the petition made, the county council and commissioners appropriated the money, and the design was chosen at a meeting Clement Studebaker attended which Howard judged "perhaps the very last public meeting which he attended" before his death. The monument the county bought was designed by McDonnel and Sons of New York — the University of Notre Dame's Building South Bend survey renders the firm's name also as McDaniel & Sons — with its bronze figures modeled by the sculptor Rudolf Schwarz, whose name the survey also spells Schwartz. It is a granite shaft carrying bronze figures of the services, built first on the south lawn of the courthouse.

The monument's own record of itself: The inscriptions are the monument's testimony, transcribed in full by the Historical Marker Database from the stones and plaques themselves. The front plaque reads: "1861 — 1865. In grateful recognition of the patriotism, services, and sacrifices of our soldiers in the War of the Union, we, the people of St. Joseph County, have erected this monument. June 25, 1905." Under the date the plaque carries Will Carleton's verses on the Grand Army of the dead — "When the years of Earth are over, and the cares of Earth are done… Then shall march with brightest laurels, and with proud, victorious tread, to their station up in heaven, our Grand Army of the Dead." The left plaque is a battle roll: Laurel Hill, Rich Mountain, Shiloh, Iuka, Corinth, Perryville, Stone's River, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Knoxville, Mission Ridge, Atlanta, Sherman's March, Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Petersburg, Fort Fisher, Mobile, Appomattox. The right plaque is the county's muster, headed "Companies going into the Union Army from St. Joseph County": Companies I of the 9th Indiana in both its three-months and three-years service, B of the 15th, F and H of the 29th, B, E and F of the 48th, C of the 73rd, K of the 87th, K of the 99th, D of the 128th, H of the 138th, H of the 155th, H of the 12th Cavalry, the 21st Battery, the 35th Regimental Band, and the Nashville Post Band of the 20th Army Corps. The obverse plaque names the county council, the board of county commissioners and the Monument Association, and closes: "Erected 1905 by the people of St. Joseph County."

The date conflict, printed: Howard's history prints his own acceptance speech, delivered for the association when the county handed the finished monument over — "We receive it on the part of the people of St. Joseph county" — and dates the association's forming, in that speech, as "nearly four years" before he spoke, which would put his speaking in 1903. The University of Notre Dame's Building South Bend survey likewise dates the monument 1903, and Schwarz's catalogue of works dates his figures 1902–03. Against those stand the monument's own two statements of 1905: the front plaque's date of 25 June 1905 and the obverse's "Erected 1905." No dedication coverage reachable for this record settles the difference — whether the shaft rose in 1903 and was formally dedicated on 25 June 1905, or the later surveys err, is printed here as an open conflict, with the inscriptions given as the monument's own word about itself.

The square's memorial line, and the move: The monument did not stand alone for long, and it has not stood still. Built on the south lawn of the third county courthouse, it was moved to the north lawn when the County-City Building rose beside the old courthouse in the late 1960s, and it stands on the north lawn today, on West Washington Street west of Main — photographed there for the marker record in 2012 and again in 2022. Within a short walk of it the courthouse grounds carry the square's later accretions, among them a ten-inch shell taken from the battleship Maine and presented to St. Joseph County — the relic of the war of 1898, kept as a war memorial in its own right — and the county's replica of the Statue of Liberty. The square thus holds, within a few hundred feet, the county's tributes of 1905, of the Spanish War's relic-keeping, and of the mid-twentieth century, around the courthouse where the association's petition was filed.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, vol. 2 (Lewis Publishing, 1907) — the monument association's forming on 16 December 1899, its officers and directors, the 1896 encampment surplus, the $25,000 appropriation and John Hughes's 9,000 signatures, the design meeting Clement Studebaker attended, and Howard's acceptance speech; read in the LDS Genealogy transcription of the volume.
2. Historical Marker Database, "St. Joseph County Civil War Monument" (m53896), transcriptions and photographs 2012 and 2022 — the front plaque's text and date, the Carleton verses, the battle roll, the company roll, the obverse plaque's "Erected 1905," and the present north-lawn location; and the same database's county listing — the ten-inch shell from the battleship Maine, presented to the county, on the courthouse grounds.
3. Building South Bend (University of Notre Dame), property ND-SB-03031, "Soldiers and Sailors Monument, 206 West Washington" — the 1903 date, the McDonnel and Sons design and Rudolf Schwarz bronzes with their variant spellings, the south-lawn building and the move to the north lawn at the County-City Building's construction.
4. Rudolf Schwarz catalogue of works, as carried in reference accounts — the monument's figures dated 1902–03.