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1861 – 1865
The framing fact: when the Civil War was fought, the town of Walkerton existed — platted 1856, a railroad station on the Indianapolis, Peru & Chicago line — but Lincoln Township did not. The ground was the southern reach of Liberty Township, and whatever quota, bounty vote, or credit the ground earned stands, if it stands anywhere, in Liberty Township's and the county's records, not under a Lincoln heading. Neither Chapman nor Howard prints a township bounty vote, quota, or credit for this ground under either name; both histories were read for exactly that. Howard's enlistment machinery runs from South Bend — the meeting of 19 April 1861, its township subscription committees (Penn, notably, does not appear in his list either, as the Osceola pass found), the Volunteer Aid Association — and Chapman's military chapter is the same. What this ground voted, paid, or was credited with stands in records the histories did not print: the county commissioners' record for 1861–65 and the draft subscription lists in the Saint Joseph County Civil War Records at the Notre Dame Archives, named in the closing register as the settlers.
The county total out: Chapman's figure, printed as he prints it: "More than two thousand of as brave men as ever handled a musket or drew a sword went out from this county, many, very many, never to return again." The first company left South Bend on Friday, 19 April 1861, "being the first volunteer company from Northern Indiana to take up its line of march." A railroad town of a few hundred people, five years platted, sent its share of those two thousand out through the county's companies; the next articles state what of that share can still be named, and what cannot.
Sources:
- Howard, Ch. XIV §1, p. 717; Ch. VIII §10 (Lincoln formed 7 June 1866, out of the Liberty Township frame).
- Chapman, History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), Ch. VII, pp. 411–413.
- Saint Joseph County Civil War Records finding aid, University of Notre Dame Archives — named as settler, not read.