Cemeteries change over time, as does ownership of the cemetery. Residents of Reno, NV learned this recently when they saw a public notice posted on the small Hillside Cemetery near the University of Nevada, Reno advising them of plans to disinter and move the remains in over a thousand graves. Civil War soldiers are among those, as are Reno residents of all walks of life who died in the early 1900s. Where is your soldier buried? Is he targeted for disinterment? How would you even know? What would you - could you - do if you found out? Is it necessarily a bad thing? You can read more about this specific case online. I found one local TV station's (NBC News4) article (text plus video) dated August 29, 2016 on their site. I found out about it in the Arizona Republic, which ran an Associated Press piece in the Sunday paper on September 25. (I'm not providing a link because it does not turn up in a search of their online news site.) The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) has a committee charged with finding soldiers' graves and creating and maintaining a database. The National Graves Registration Database is always looking for new information about burial locations and ordinary folk may sign on as contributors. You need not be an SUVCW member. Perhaps you live near an old cemetery and can look for soldiers' graves there and enter their information. Maybe you have a Civil War ancestor and would like his final resting place to be known. I've entered my 3rd MA Heavy Artillery ancestors into the database; it wasn't difficult. You can do this for your soldier, too!
|
AuthorThe author is a historian with a Ph.D. in US history and a love for genealogy and old photos. Archives
August 2018
Categories |