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April – August 1861
The first company left from the Lake Shore depot on Friday, 19 April 1861, four days after the courthouse meeting: Chapman calls it "the first volunteer company from Northern Indiana to take up its line of march." An immense crowd saw it off, with speeches by the Rev. J. C. Reed and Schuyler Colfax. The company became Company I of the 9th Indiana Infantry (three months) — Captain Andrew Anderson, Jr.; First Lieutenant Henry Loring; Second Lieutenant Henry J. Blowney. The regiment was mustered at Indianapolis on 25 April 1861 under Colonel Robert H. Milroy, was the first Indiana regiment to leave the state (29 May), and fought at Philippi (3 June), Laurel Hill and Carrick's Ford in western Virginia. In Company I served John Auten, who volunteered for a scouting party — he was not detailed to it — and was killed on 10 July 1861, in his twenty-second year: the first man killed from St. Joseph County. Chapman's Roll of Honor carries the entry in its terse form: "Auten, John — Killed at Bealington, Virginia, July 10, 1861." His funeral was held on 2 August 1861 in the very courtroom where he had enlisted; Howard records that not less than five thousand people attended and followed the body to the city cemetery — in a town whose whole population was then under five thousand. The Grand Army post organized at South Bend in 1866 took his name, and carries it still in the record: Auten Post No. 8 (below).
Sources:
- Chapman, History of St. Joseph County (1880), ch. VII — the departure of 19 April 1861 and the "first volunteer company from Northern Indiana"; the officers of Company I; the Roll of Honor entry for Auten.
- Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), vol. 2 — Auten's volunteering for the scout, his death as the county's first, and the funeral of 2 August 1861 with its five thousand mourners.