The people of Beaver County at the beginning of the twentieth century were no more aware of the role they as Americans were to play in the wars of the decades to come than was any other citizen of the United States. Since the end of the Civil War, the United States actively pursued expansionism but with the firm belief they could keep themselves isolated from affairs that might lead them to wars overseas. Perhaps it was its unequivocable successes against Spain in Cuba and the Philippines that may have planted the seed of an emerging imperialism, a seed that sprouted slowly and didn't really blossom until the outset of the First World War.
Nevertheless, from the time soldiers arrived back in the States in 1898 fresh from the Spanish-American War, the country was set on a course that would lead it into the twentieth century as a legitimate world power. It was not only philosophical direction of the United States that was changing. It was the whole concept of warfare. And Beaver County was probably to have as much to do with the direction of that course as any other section of the country.
Past domestic wars, as well as the Spanish-American War, saw companies of men formed locally often with its very own officers. For example, in the Civil War, eleven Pennsylvania regiments had one or more Beaver County companies' each with its own elected officers. In the Spanish-American War, Company B, Tenth Regiment consisted of volunteers from Beaver County.' The policy of the Army was in most cases to leave local forces intact whenever possible and thus to achieve a very local flavor in most units.
It was not feasible, however, to do this once the American armies became more sophisticated. While men often went to camp and trained together, they were soon assimilated into the cold machinery of war. There had been some experimentation with breaking up local units in the Spanish-American War, but it had become general policy by World War One. Beaver County draftees trained at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio and Fort Lee, Virginia, originally made up the Tenth Regiment ("The Fighting Tenth"), but as early as September 28, 1917, they had lost their identity and were swallowed up by the One Hundred Eleventh Infantry ("Three Aces")'. This was one unit from the County that to some degree anyway, has been able to maintain its integrity as a single force to the present time.