1882 meeting of the St. Joseph County (MI) Pioneer Society

From Black Hawk Slept Here

The 1882 annual meeting of the St. Joseph County Pioneer Society was a special one that recognized the living members who had served in the militias during the Black Hawk war. The meeting was held in Centreville, on June 14, 1882. The proceedings are recorded in Volume 5 of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, pages 504 and following:

At 1 o'clock p.m., the meeting was called to order by an address of welcome by the president Wm. H. Cross, as follows:

Friends and Fellow Pioneers: We are again permitted to meet at our 9th annual gathering, and have this morning selected the officers for the coming year, which our secretary will announce to you. There is a peculiar significance to this year's meeting: 50 years ago to-day, almost all of the men in Branch and St. Joseph counties were under arms, and in the service of the United States. They had been called into service because of the Black Hawk war, and your executive committee hs seen fit to extend to all the survivors of that time a special invitation to meet with us. We have sent notes to some of them with expression of our wish that they be with us, and we hope there may be a large number present, and we ask them to take places in front of the speakers' stand, that they may hear, and also that they may tell us of the incidents and recollections of that year, and of that campaign, and short, comprehensive statements from them will, we know, be listened to by all the assembly with engrossing interest, even if some others are shortened in the time that might be most gladly spent in listening to them.

This was followed by singing that old hymn, "And are we all alive," and prayer by Rev. E.L. Kellogg.

Here followed a special request to the soldiers of the Black Hawk war to take seats in the center of the stand.

The following old veterans responded to the invitation: Capt. Alvin Calhoun, of Florence twp.; John W. Fletcher, Nottawa twp.; Hiram Jacobs, of Sturgis; Geo. Thurston, Sturgis; John Hamilton of Constantine; Walter G. Stevens, of Centreville, Wayne county, Ind.; Samuel Burnell, Lima, Lagrange county, Ind; John Hartman, of Cass county, Mich.; Samuel A. Fitch, of Lockport, Mich.; Wm H. Cross, of Centreville, Mich.

Of those soldiers to whom in April last invitations were sent to meet with us, whom we knew were then living, six have gone: Amasa Miller, of Sturgis, April 14; Joseph Butler, Nottawa, June 6; E. A. Trumbull, Detroit, June 1; Ira Beadle, Fabius, June 12; James Powers, Mendon, May 8; Asahel Savery, Kendall county, Texas, June 4.

The Proceedings then go on to list other pioneers who had died since the last meeting. One of these, B.B. Gardner of Sturgis, was also a soldier of the Black Hawk war. He presumably had somehow not been included in the list of those who received special invitations.

Many of the veterans present got up to speak, and their words are recorded in the same proceedings. Those words will be transcribed in the appropriate article about each individual.