Ex-airman works to ID, restore Civil War graves

[cec]

Ex-airman works to ID, restore Civil War graves




By Jim Harger - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Dec 4, 2007 9:55:33 EST

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Robert Keeler was buried in Oakhill Cemetery more than 143 years ago, but Eloise Haven probably knows more about him today than his fellow Civil War veterans did when he died.
“He was born Robert Keillor, the oldest of 10 children,” Haven said, spelling out his family surname as she points to his gravestone.
Keeler probably changed the spelling and falsified his age when he enlisted in the 7th Michigan Cavalry, Haven said. When he died of an undetermined illness in 1864, he was just 15 years old.
Thanks to Haven’s work and her Veterans Remembrance Project, Keeler and 67 other soldiers buried at Oakhill Cemetery are not fading away. Haven has seen to it that Keeler and 20 of the other soldiers buried near him have new headstones, courtesy of the U.S. government.
She has worked with cemetery officials to raise and reposition other headstones that have fallen or sunken into the soil.
The 61-year-old Kentwood resident said her goal is to identify and preserve every veteran’s grave in the city’s cemeteries.
Haven, who earned a master’s degree in history from Central Michigan University after she was discharged from the Air Force in 1970, began her work with the Civil War veterans buried at Oakhill Cemetery on the city’s southeast side.
That’s where her great-grandfather — a Civil War veteran himself — was buried in 1922.
Relying on old cemetery records, military pension records, newspaper clippings and genealogical records, Haven painstakingly has documented each soldier’s life in a thick loose-leaf folder.
Her most exhaustive efforts have focused on the old Soldier’s Cemetery, a collection of plots in Oakhill Cemetery that were purchased by the federal government after the Civil War for burial of veterans.
Many of the 67 veterans buried in the cemetery were given wooden headboards that quickly deteriorated or disappeared, Haven said. Other marble gravestones have seen their markings worn down over the years.
Some of the graves marked “Unknown” now have names, thanks to Haven’s research.
Haven’s work also has been hampered by poor record-keeping and a fire that destroyed most of the records in the Oakhill Cemetery offices in the late 1880s.
She also is dealing with a lack of resources. Because there is no backhoe at the cemetery, she has to wait for another burial, then cajole cemetery workers into placing the new stones on the old soldiers’ graves.
Trudie Anderson, who runs the city’s Cemetery Division office, says Haven is doing work that is “long past due.”
“It takes a lot of time and dedication and someone who has a love of what they’re doing to accomplish what she’s accomplishing,” Anderson said.
Haven, who began her project 2½ years ago when she moved to western Michigan from upstate New York, said her project has a mission that goes beyond tidying up the city’s cemetery records.
“Part of America’s problem is basically that she’s forgotten who she is,” Haven said. “Americans have no idea of what it’s like to have war on your own soil.”
More than 700 men fought in the Civil War at a time when Grand Rapids was a community of just 8,000 residents, she said.
Many of them returned with limbs missing and disfiguring wounds, she said.
“For years, there must have been constant reminders.”
After her Civil War research is concluded, there are the veterans to research from the Spanish-American War, the War of 1812 and the Revolutionary War. She is hoping to find students who will take an interest in the research.
“People like mysteries,” Haven said. “How about solving a cold case that’s 250 years old?”



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[redtanker]

great posting.... thank you for another great read

[sfga6970]

Interesting story, we need more people like that.

[m60-gunner]

I'm glad to see other people doin this. I myself do this with my uncle in our area. We have doucumented and bio'ed every Civil War Grave in our county. Last year through a fluke we found and located a Confederate Civil War Vet. He was unmarked. I witch for graves to. Wtih the help of old newspapers and 120 yr old city records we found it and got a stone. We've found 261 Union and 1 Confederate in the main Cemetery. There are alot of Pionner Cemeterys.
We figured if everyone just found one Vet and did write up and out it in the local library it would be there for every one.