The Guard Lineage Test

The test: is any present Indiana National Guard unit descended from a company raised on this ground? Run against the lineage record, the answer is no — and the county's real lineage, at boundary size, shows what a yes would have had to look like. The 151st Infantry, the regiment whose battalions hold this part of the state, carries its lineage certificate from the Center of Military History through companies raised elsewhere: roots in the Indiana Rangers and Tippecanoe in 1811, organization on 24 June 1846 as the 2nd Regiment, Indiana Volunteers, Civil War honors combining the 7th, 10th and 11th Indiana, the Indiana Legion of 1882, the name Indiana National Guard from 5 March 1895, the 159th Indiana of 1898, the 1st Infantry of 1900, and the 151st Infantry itself from 1 October 1917 in the 38th Division. No Walkerton or Lincoln Township company appears anywhere in that descent. The county's present infantry is the regiment's 2nd Battalion — headquarters and headquarters company at South Bend, in the 76th Mobile Brigade Combat Team as organized in February 2026 — supported from the same city by Detachment 4, Headquarters Battery, 1st Battalion, 163rd Field Artillery, and Company J, 113th Support Battalion. The battalion class the test was framed with, the 1st Battalion, 293rd Infantry, is headquartered at Fort Wayne, with companies at Hartford City, Fort Wayne, Angola and Bluffton: another county's regiment, named here only to bound the test. Walkerton's ground contributes what it contributed in the militia years — men, not units — and the lineage record, read at full strength, carries no company of this town into the present Guard.

Sources: U.S. Army Center of Military History lineage, 151st Infantry (lineage certificate via Indiana National Guard, in.gov, read November 2026); Indiana National Guard unit-station and 76th Mobile Brigade Combat Team organization records (February 2026), read November 2026; 1st Battalion, 293rd Infantry headquarters record, Fort Wayne.