American Civil War Veteran Graves

[+T0SHEA]

Maybe I just missed something, however did not locate a category for veteran graves of the American Civil War.

 

What are your thoughts about this new category idea?

 

Or let me know where these grave sites belong.

[+Manville Possum]

Maybe I just missed something, however did not locate a category for veteran graves of the American Civil War.

 

What are your thoughts about this new category idea?

 

Or let me know where these grave sites belong.

 

I would support your idea, but I'm guessing graves of the American Civil War veterans are kinda rare in some places.

 

We have several Confederate cemeteries locally.

 

I once had an idea for Masonic headstones but was told there are too many of them, even though they are rare in most places that I have visited.

[+NW_history_buff]

You didn't miss anything. They're is no category for Civil War veteran graves. I've thought about this potential category myself in the past. But I quickly came to the conclusion that there exist a such a large number of Civil War graves in the numerous cemeteries I've visited, many more than American Revolutionary War graves, to make this category viable, in my opinion. I've visited cemeteries with dozens of Civil War graves in each cemetery. I think that is the reason no one in the Waymarking community has brought up this category idea because of this fact. I see Waymarking as discovering a few gems out of a field of rocks. Civil War graves are more like the plain rocks found all over, instead of the rarer, hard-to-find gems, like a centenarian grave, a Woodman of the World grave, a death mask grave, a broken column grave, a grave of an unusual death or an American Revolutionary War veteran grave.

[+Manville Possum]

Civil War graves are more like the plain rocks found all over, instead of the rarer, hard-to-find gems, like a centenarian grave, a Woodman of the World grave, a death mask grave, a broken column grave, a grave of an unusual death or an American Revolutionary War veteran grave.

 

Some of the old ones are rare, but I see many headstones placed by the Son's of Confederate Veterans to honor soldiers that are not even buried at the location.

 

I have only found one Unknown Union Soldier's marked grave in a Confederate cemetery.

[Bon Echo]

I agree that this will be a hard sell since it would be a USA-only category (maybe a few in other countries but not too many).

 

How can it be adopted to include other countries, and yet not allow it to become over-prevalent?

 

This made me think of some graves I found while in Texas - they were for "decorated" soldiers, and their medals were listed on their graves. For example, here's one for a Vietnam soldier that was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Too prevalent? Worldwide? Existing category?

[+Manville Possum]

Here is an example of what the older CSA headstones looked like.

 

I don't see American Civil War veterans headstones being a USA only category. Many fled the USA after the War of Northern aggression.

[Bon Echo]

Here is an example of what the older CSA headstones looked like.

 

I don't see American Civil War veterans headstones being a USA only category. Many fled the USA after the War of Northern aggression.

 

yep, found some of those in Texas as well

 

 

[+Manville Possum]

Here is another example of more recent "HONORARY" CSA markers placed by the SCV. The names and dates may be correct, but they were never buried here in the old Fort cemetery.

 

I don't think these should be accepted, only old ones at the actual final resting place of the soldier.

[+elyob]

I can't tell from the example. Is it easy to distinguish the SCV markers from the original markers?

Edited November 12, 2016 by elyob

[+Manville Possum]

I can't tell from the example. Is it easy to distinguish the SCV markers from the original markers?

 

Yes, it's quite easy to tell the difference. Different type of stone, different thickness, new vs weathered.

 

Here is a link to the veterans affairs web site.

[+Benchmark Blasterz]

Maybe I just missed something, however did not locate a category for veteran graves of the American Civil War.

 

What are your thoughts about this new category idea?

 

Or let me know where these grave sites belong.

 

YIKES - WAAAYYY overprevalent, I think. Depending on the circumstanes, some civil war veteran graves could be waymarked in Veteran cemeteries. I provided a couple if examples in another thread.

[+Benchmark Blasterz]

I agree that this will be a hard sell since it would be a USA-only category (maybe a few in other countries but not too many).

 

How can it be adopted to include other countries, and yet not allow it to become over-prevalent?

 

This made me think of some graves I found while in Texas - they were for "decorated" soldiers, and their medals were listed on their graves. For example, here's one for a Vietnam soldier that was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Too prevalent? Worldwide? Existing category?

 

Again, wayyyy overprevalent. Most US Veteran graves will carry their decorations in modern times, especially if they earned a Purple Heart, or received higher-ranking decorations such as Meritorious Service Medals, Army/Navy Cross, Bronze Stars, and the like. There may be thousands of such graves in a national cemetery.

 

There is already a category for Medal of Honor resting places. I think categories for other medals resting places would be overprevakent, even though global.

[+T0SHEA]

I agree this is larger and more complex then originally thought.

 

We are in Canada, and only when we travel in the US do we find these Civil War grave sites. We have located both the new flat granite markers and others that appear older, however at closer examination (if there are several) these are all alike. We recently located 7 such markers, they possibly were placed in 1984 when the cemetery was restored. It was overgrown, and almost lost, the association in charge of the cemetery are continuing to place new markers for those unmarked graves, not necessarily the Civil War Veterans. The veteran portion is fenced off from the rest of the cemetery with a zinc war memorial.

 

Unless someone can give ideas to make this work, it seems a difficult task as mentioned.

 

Thanks to everyone who has enlightened us on this topic.

[+Benchmark Blasterz]

I agree this is larger and more complex then originally thought.

 

We are in Canada, and only when we travel in the US do we find these Civil War grave sites. We have located both the new flat granite markers and others that appear older, however at closer examination (if there are several) these are all alike. We recently located 7 such markers, they possibly were placed in 1984 when the cemetery was restored. It was overgrown, and almost lost, the association in charge of the cemetery are continuing to place new markers for those unmarked graves, not necessarily the Civil War Veterans. The veteran portion is fenced off from the rest of the cemetery with a zinc war memorial.

 

Unless someone can give ideas to make this work, it seems a difficult task as mentioned.

 

Thanks to everyone who has enlightened us on this topic.

 

These veteran tombstones are all alike in the various eras because they are all standardized and issued by the US Govt Dept of Veteran's Affairs. The decision was made generations ago to provide a tombstone as a military service benefit. In the US, you can choose to have an epitaph or a listing of the highest decoration. I was asked this question for my Dad, and I decided on the epitaph "Proudly Served" instead of his medals. That won't be an option for me and my husband, who will go into the Columbaruim together, without room for more than name, rank, branch of service, and war.

 

All modern VA tombstones now state either the era or war the veteran served during. For example, my husband and I are Desert Storm Persian Gulf War Navy veterans.

 

My Dad was an Army Vietnam-era veteran, although he never fought in Vietnam or served in support of that conflict. In fact, when I saw Dad's tombstone said "Vietnam," I was horrified. Dad was so troubled by the erroneous claims of some to valor they had not earned, that I knew he would have been humiliated to be seen to be claiming on his tombstone that he was a Vietnam veteran, when he ALWAYS made clear that he was not. So I stood in the cemetery, on my cell phone, talking to the nice folks at the VA about changing that tombstone ASAP. They were very kind, and explained that they never thought to ask about service era for 2 reasons: 1. Era/war of service is standard and 2. Dad served from 1958-1978, so the vast majority of his service occurred during the Vietnam era. I remember the VA guy saying that he had learned something that day: to always ask about veteran's preference for service era. I told him I expected the next 5000 Veteran families he asked would be OK with the standard, but every now and then there'd be one square peg for the round hole (like us) ha ha. I think it took 2 weeks for the new tombstone to arrive. Sec 14B, space 414, D/FW National Cemetery if you're in the local area and would like to drop by. It's a beautiful cemetery.

 

I had Dad's tombstone changed to reflect his service era as Berlin Crisis, because he was deployed to Germany in 1959 in response to that crisis, instead of Vietnam, where he never served.

 

We really like the older Civil War headstones, with the inset shields and has-relief letters. We have seen a lot of those in the Indian Wars or older Fort cemeteries as well. They're hard to read sometimes, as letters get chipped off by time, weather, and mowers, but they are evocative and beautiful.

[+BruceS]

I agree American Civil War graves would be very over prevalent. There are several factors making it so.

 

First the vast number of veterans of this war, over 600,000 died in the War itself and there were millions of other veterans who died after.

 

Second the graves of Civil War veterans were more likely to survive due to a couple of factors which occurred at the time of the Civil War.

 

The Civil War marked the beginning of National Cemeteries in the US. They were created to have more centralized place to bury the Union soldiers kill during the War. They were often located near the battlefields. Thus the reason one sees large number of Union soldiers buried in the south as after the war great effort was taken to collect the remains of Union soldiers from makeshift graves scattered around battlefields and move them for proper burial in the nearby National Cemetery (this include Arlington National Cemetery). Some of these National Cemeteries were relatively small by today's standards for National Cemeteries but still contained thousands of Union Soldier graves. These cemeteries have been continuously been maintained by the US government.

 

The Civil War also coincided with the move to more centralized cemeteries around the country as opposed to scattered family cemeteries and each church having its own graveyard. These more centralized cemeteries had a better chance of being continuously maintained thus the graves preserved.

[+QuarrellaDeVil]

I can't see how it would qualify for a category (and I don't think that they're a fit for the Out of Place Graves category), but when I visit cemeteries here in Texas, besides keeping my open for graves of Confederate soldiers, I'm also on the lookout for graves of Union soldiers. They're uncommon, but for someone like me who's history-minded, I often wonder what brought these folks to Texas, and whether old battles were fought if someone who'd fought for the Confederacy lived nearby.

[+blakelylaw580]

Folks, given the current woke atmosphere in the US, I believe this is an idea worth revisiting before these gravestones become part of the cancel movement.