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1861 – 1865
Three full companies of the 48th were St. Joseph County's own: The 48th Indiana was organized at Goshen between 5 December 1861 and 28 January 1862 under Colonel Norman Eddy of South Bend. Companies B, E and F were recruited in this county — Company F at Mishawaka, under Captain Barnett Byrkit; Mishawaka's own build will tell that company's story from its own ground, and it stands here as the county regiment's company — besides county members scattered through the regiment's other companies. Howard's judgment on the regiment is the one the record supports: it "comes, perhaps, as near to the hearts of the people of St. Joseph county as does any other single regiment." Its service was the western war in one line: Paducah; Iuka (19 September 1862); Corinth (3–4 October 1862); Grant's Central Mississippi campaign; Port Gibson, Raymond and Champion Hill; the assaults on Vicksburg and the siege; Chattanooga; the Atlanta campaign; the March to the Sea; and the Carolinas, mustering out at Louisville on 15 July 1865. Eddy resigned in June 1863 from wounds received at Iuka; Edward J. Wood was a later colonel. The regiment's total loss, from the federal record, was 267 men: 88 enlisted men killed and mortally wounded, and 4 officers and 175 enlisted men dead of disease — the arithmetic of this war everywhere, disease outkilling battle two to one. The county's share of that loss stands name by name in Chapman's Roll of Honor, which carries the 48th's dead at Iuka (Philip Crites, Edward Curn and David Frazer, all 19 September 1862) and at Corinth (John Drake, 4 October 1862) among its first pages.
Sources:
- Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), vol. 2 — the three county companies, Byrkit's Company F at Mishawaka, and the regiment's place in the county's regard.
- Chapman, History of St. Joseph County (1880), ch. VII — the Roll of Honor entries for the 48th's county dead at Iuka and Corinth.
- National Park Service, Battle Unit Details, and Dyer's Compendium as carried there — the 48th's organization, service line, Eddy and Wood, and the regimental loss of 267.