TH UR SDA Y , A U G U S T 11, 20 16
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HONORING THEIR SERVICE Civil War soldiers in unmarked graves get new headstones in Montgomery By TONY SCOTT tscott@kendallcountynow.com Seventeen Civil War veterans in Montgomery’s Riverside Cemetery who were in unmarked graves recently have received new headstones, thanks to the efforts of a pair of Civil War veteran advocates and a village of Montgomery staffer. Robert Rogers and David Bailey of Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War say the organization has put up 200 new markers for Civil War veterans in 17 cemeteries throughout the Chicago area. Following the installation of headstones, there usually is a ceremony commemorating the veterans’ service in the war. Following a ceremony in Will County a couple of years ago, Debbie Buchanan, the village’s executive director and its staff liaison to the village’s historic preservation commission, contacted the pair to inquire about doing similar work in the Riverside Cemetery. The cemetery is operated by Dieterle Memorial Home in Montgomery. “We got together with her, found out a little bit more about the cemetery, did some research using public records on how many Civil War veterans might be buried here, and then we said we’d go ahead and take a look at who needed new headstones, who doesn’t,” Bailey said. Buchanan said she was grateful for the work that the pair did for the Civil War dead buried in the cemetery. These guys have been great to work with,” she said. “I say ‘work with,’ but they’ve done 99 percent of the work. They are very good at researching, they did research on each of the Civil War vets that’s buried at the cemetery to verify what unit they served with and get all the documentation they needed. We had several lists that didn’t agree with each other, so they’ve gone through it very thoroughly and verified all the information. To think that we have 54, 55 Civil War veterans in the cemetery there, 17 were in unmarked graves all these years. And so it’s just really cool to see them get headstones and have their final resting place marked in some way like that, and to have this ceremony to rededicate the graves and just honor them a little bit so their service isn’t forgotten.”
Tony Scott - tscott@kendallcountynow.com
The grave of William Elias Reed, a Civil War Union soldier buried at Riverside Cemetery in Montgomery. Reed received a new marker after having an unmarked grave since his death in 1928. A ceremony for the Civil War veterans in Riverside Cemetery has been set for 1 p.m. Oct. 29. A ceremony for the Civil War veterans in Riverside Cemetery has been set for 1 p.m. Oct. 29 at the cemetery. More details will be forthcoming as the date nears, but Buchanan said Gene Michaels, a member of the historic preservation commission and a local historian, will speak at the ceremony and Bailey said a local Civil War re-enactment group will perform an artillery salute. The pair partnered with local Boy Scouts, including a couple of Eagle Scout candidates, to help clean up the headstones, straighten others, and replace or install new headstones for those who
either had broken headstones or were in unmarked graves. “We found there were 17 veterans that either had no headstones at all or, there were a couple who had older stones but were either broken or unreadable, so we got replacements for those,” Bailey said. Bailey explained that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs supplies the markers for free, and that they are historically accurate, which means that they look like vintage headstones but are brand new. “The VA supplies them for free, but it takes some time to pull all the documentation together you need for the VA and for
the VA to get their contractor to manufacture them and get them delivered,” he said. “A number of years ago, the VA started offering the historically accurate [headstones], which includes the recessed shield, which they only use for Civil War and Spanish American War veterans.” The new headstones arrived this past spring, Rogers said, and the team got to work. Rogers said the pair approached the Three Fires Council, and three Boy Scouts helped with the project.
See HEADSTONES, page 5