The monument pictured on page two of this memorial was ordered and paid for by three men in 1925. Mr. Mabe, Mr. Freeze and Mr. Hurley purchased the monument as a tribute to the 22 men from Van Buren Township who enlisted on 15 September 1861 into Co C, 6th Indiana Volunteer Infantry.

The Van Buren volunteers were sworn in under a big elm tree located on what is now owned by Jack Lutes in the little town of Pikes Peak Indiana. It was Mabe, Hurley and Freeze’s plan to set the monument up on the exact spot where the men swore in. Unfortunately the day they picked up the monument it had been raining and was too muddy to get the old truck up the hill near the tree. So they split the difference and set the monument off next to the road near the old hotel.

According to the old timers this monument was the first Veterans Memorial of any kind to be erected in Brown County. It sits about eight feet from the road, Bellesville Pike, in Pikes Peak Indiana.

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Augustus McDowell