The Grand Army: Jesse Coppock Post No. 378 — and the man it was named for

The post: Howard's enumeration of the county's Grand Army posts (Ch. XIV §3) seats seven: Auten Post No. 8, South Bend; Deacon Post No. 115, New Carlisle; Houghton Post No. 128, Mishawaka; Joseph Bowen Post No. 197, North Liberty; Jesse Coppock Post No. 378, Walkerton; Notre Dame Post No. 569; Norman Eddy Post No. 579, South Bend. Walkerton's post is the township's own, and it was alive in the record a generation on: in September 1895 the South Bend Weekly Tribune's Walkerton correspondence reports that "the G. A. R., W. R. C. and the Walkerton cornet band, together with a number of citizens attended the soldiers' reunion in Lapaz Tuesday" — the post, its Woman's Relief Corps auxiliary, and the town band traveling together to the next county's reunion, which is what a living post looked like in print. The post's charter date and its end do not stand in any source read; the Department of Indiana's rosters and the post's own descriptive book are the settlers, in the closing register.

The namesake — the proof problem, stated whole: Grand Army posts were named for dead comrades, and the county's other posts bear out the custom — Auten for John Auten, the county's first man killed, of Portage Township; Houghton, presumably, for Capt. James Houghton of Company I. By that custom, Jesse Coppock was a Union soldier of this ground whom the post's founders honored — but no record read identifies him: he stands on no county roll reached, in no roster swept, and Chapman's Roll of Honor, which gives no townships, cannot be searched for him by place. The searches run for him by name returned no soldier. He is therefore printed as what he is: the post's name, and an open question with named settlers — the post's descriptive book and charter application in the state Grand Army collection (Indiana Archives), the Indiana Digital Archives' Civil War volunteers card file under his name, and the 1886, 1890 and 1894 enrollments of soldiers, widows and orphans for Lincoln Township, which list the township's veterans with their units. Until one of those lands, no regiment, no death, and no grave is asserted for Jesse Coppock anywhere in this section.

Decoration Day: no observance at Walkerton is printed in Chapman, in Howard's Walkerton or Lincoln sections, or in Howard's Grand Army section — a tested negative in the books, with the Coppock Post records and the Walkerton papers' May issues named as settlers. The 1895 reunion item above is the nearest print of the post at its public work.

Sources:

1. Howard, Ch. XIV §3, pp. 743–745 — the county post list.
2. South Bend Weekly Tribune, 7 September 1895, Walkerton correspondence — via the INGenWeb newspaper-clippings transcription, read.
3. Searches run for Jesse Coppock as a soldier — negative as stated; the Indiana State Archives' record classes named from its published guides.