The Spanish-American War · Studebaker’s Tigers and South Bend’s one company

1898

South Bend's war with Spain was fought by a regiment its own city named: The 157th Indiana Volunteer Infantry — formed from the 3rd Regiment of the Indiana National Guard and mustered into United States service at Indianapolis on 10 May 1898 — was commanded by Colonel George M. Studebaker of South Bend, and the regiment's own Soldier's Memorial prints its nickname on the title page: "Studebakers Tigers." South Bend furnished the regiment its colonel and one company. Company F — organized at South Bend on 3 February 1887 as a National Guard company — was Captain George W. Freyermuth’s; its first lieutenant was Harry E. Faulkner, and its second lieutenant John S. Johnston (the Record also prints Johnson; both spellings are the adjutant general’s own). The regiment’s Company A, Captain Charles Windisch’s, was organized at Knox in Starke County — not a South Bend company, though South Bend men stood in its ranks, among them Private Samuel W. Defrees and Private August K. Hilberg and a dozen of the recruits who joined on 25 June 1898.

The regiment went from Camp Mount to Camp Thomas at Chickamauga Park on 15 May, then to Port Tampa, Florida, where it remained on duty until 30 August; it never left the United States, and it was mustered out at Indianapolis on 1 November 1898. Its war, like the Civil War’s, was killed by disease rather than battle: the War Department’s statistical exhibit counts two officers and sixteen enlisted men dead of disease in the regiment. The adjutant general’s roster remarks assign this county’s share of that loss exactly: Company F lost two men — Private Harry W. Herring, of South Bend, died 17 October 1898, and Private Harry O. Perkins, of South Bend, died 20 August 1898 — and Company A, read whole, lost no man. The company’s remaining remarks are the war’s smaller print: Corporal Fred L. Dennis promoted sergeant major of the 1st Battalion on 11 July 1898; Private Charles Wendt promoted corporal on 15 August; one desertion, Recruit John D. Parker of South Bend, on 17 August 1898; and Second Lieutenant Johnston’s plain remark, mustered out with the company on 1 November 1898.

Sources:

1. Record of Indiana Volunteers in the Spanish-American War, 1898–1899 (Adjutant-General James K. Gore, 1899) — the 157th's formation and muster; the Company A and Company F rosters with their officers, and the remarks recording the deaths of Pease (Port Tampa, 20 July 1898, typhoid fever), Reasor (South Bend, 24 June 1898) and Lumbert, McTigue's promotion, and the Meissnest desertion.
2. Soldier's Memorial of the 157th Regiment Indiana Volunteer Infantry (Indiana Memory, Indiana State Library) — the regimental staff under Col. George M. Studebaker and the "Studebakers Tigers" title.
3. War Department, Statistical Exhibit of Strength of Volunteer Forces Called into Service During the War with Spain (1899), as carried in the regiment's compiled service summary — two officers and sixteen enlisted men dead of disease; Camp Thomas, Port Tampa, and the muster-out of 1 November 1898.