The Spanish-American rosters read whole: one South Bend company, and two dead

1898 – 1899

The pull: the banked Wars section gives South Bend two companies in Colonel George M. Studebaker's 157th Indiana — Company A under Captain Charles Windisch and Company F under Captain George W. Fryermuth — and assigns Company F three deaths; its own log left Company A's roster tail, the surnames beyond R, unread, "expected to confirm the zero" of Company A deaths. This pass read both companies' rosters whole in the source the banked entry cites: the adjutant general's Record of Indiana Volunteers in the Spanish-American War, 1898–1899 (Gen. James K. Gore, 1899), in two independent copies of the printed volume, down to the placement of every remark. The record returns a larger correction than the one owed.

One company, not two: Gore's Record gives each company its organization line. Company F "was organized at South Bend, St. Joseph County, on February 3, 1887, and was assigned as Company F, 3d Infantry, Indiana National Guard" — South Bend's company, the same Guard company whose lineage the Wars section follows into the First World War. Company A "was organized at Knox, Starke County, on July 2, 1895" — it is the Starke County company, Captain Windisch's, and the regiment's own formation list names the company towns in order: Knox, Fort Wayne, Goshen, North Manchester, Elkhart, South Bend, Angola, Waterloo, Auburn, Ligonier, Plymouth. South Bend furnished the 157th its colonel and one company. Company A's ranks were not strangers here — Private Samuel W. Defrees and Private August K. Hilberg enlisted from South Bend, a corporal resided at Walkerton, and a dozen of the recruits who joined the company on 25 June 1898 were South Bend men, among them Max Biniakowski, Abraham B. Chidester, William Fiedler, Jules Forkies, Chester Grzesk, Harry S. Jennings, John Koscicki, Frank Nowinski, Clarence Edward Platz, Stanislaus Szalewski, Harry M. White and Frank Woltman — but the company is Knox's in the record, and it is printed here as Knox's, with its South Bend men named as what they were: this city's soldiers in another town's company.

Company A, read whole, lost no man:1, '98." No death and no desertion stands anywhere in Company A's roster.

Company F's dead are two, and their names are Herring and Perkins: Company F's roster, read whole on pages 88 to 91 of the Record, carries exactly two death remarks. Private Harry W. Herring of South Bend — "Died Oct. 17, '98." Private Harry O. Perkins of South Bend — "Died Aug. 20, '98." The company's remaining remarks are the war's smaller print, and they are these: Corporal Fred L. Dennis promoted sergeant major of the 1st Battalion on 11 July 1898; Private Charles Wendt promoted corporal on 15 August; Privates Charles Sessions and Bernhard L. Swartz transferred out on 29 June; Private Harry R. Ford of Mishawaka mustered onto the field and staff roll; and one desertion — Recruit John D. Parker of South Bend, enlisted 23 June 1898, "Deserted Aug. 17, '98." Second Lieutenant John S. Johnston's remark is the plain one: mustered out with the company on 1 November 1898. The Record spells the company's officers Freyermuth (the captain), Faulkner (the first lieutenant), and the second lieutenant Johnson in the regimental list and Johnston in the company roster — Gore's own two spellings, printed here as he prints them.

What the banked entry prints that the record does not contain: the three Company F deaths the Wars section names — Private George C. Pease, said to have died of typhoid fever at Port Tampa on 20 July 1898; Private Charles Reasor, said to have died at South Bend on 24 June 1898; and Private Earl J. Neither does the resignation of the second lieutenant and the promotion of a Sergeant McTigue to his place, nor a Private Edward J. Meissnest of Company A deserting at Camp Thomas. The regiment did lose two officers and sixteen enlisted men to disease by the War Department's statistical exhibit — that frame stands — but the Record the banked entry cites assigns this county's share of it as two men, Herring and Perkins, and no honest reading of that Record yields the three names printed. At assembly the Wars entry conforms: Pease, Reasor and Lumbert come out unless another source is produced that carries them, and in that case the source, not Gore, is what gets cited; Herring and Perkins go in, with their dates as the Record gives them. The correction is printed here at full size because the dead are named in this history exactly as the rolls name them — and these two were not named at all.

Sources:

1. Record of Indiana Volunteers in the Spanish-American War, 1898–1899 (Adjutant-General James K. Gore, 1899) — the 157th Regiment's formation list and the detailed company rosters: Company A (Knox) at pp. 70–73 and Company F (South Bend) at pp. 88–91, read entire in two copies of the printed volume (the archive.org copies recordofindianav00indi and recordindianavo00goog), remarks aligned to names from the volumes' own page structure.
2. The banked Wars section's Spanish-American entry and its source line, which cites this Record for the names corrected here.