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1776 – 1830s
No war was fought on this ground before it was settled, and the county's first soldiers are men who arrived after their wars were over: Howard's history states it plainly — during the Revolution and the War of 1812 there were no white inhabitants in this territory. Two Revolutionary soldiers afterward lived here and lie in the old City Cemetery: Peter Roof, Sr., and Isaac Ross. The War of 1812 men who later resided in the county are named by Howard as a roll of the county's first military generation: Thomas J. Allen, John B. Chandonai, Daniel Cottrell, Ransom Curtis, Theophilus Case, Archibald Defrees, Christopher W. Emerick, Daniel Heck, Christopher Lenz, Artemus Johnson, Peter Johnson, John Mack, Sr., Jesse K. Platz, Jehu Meredith, Peter Roof, Jr., Claybourne Smith and John Sample. Chandonai was a trusted scout for Generals Lewis Cass and William Henry Harrison. Alexis Coquillard, the trader whose post stood at the river's mouth, was engaged in Harrison's army's service in the War of 1812 as a boy — in the army's employ, not as an enlisted soldier, and Howard prints the distinction. These men belong to the Veterans section's deep record; they stand here because every later war this county fought was fought by their neighbors' sons.
Sources:
- Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 2, military chapter, "Other Early Wars" — no white inhabitants during the Revolution or the War of 1812; Roof and Ross in City Cemetery; the seventeen named War of 1812 residents; Chandonai's scouting for Cass and Harrison; Coquillard's boyhood service.