GDG- New gravestones for Civil War vets

[Ray Bauernhuber]

In today's NY Newsday I read of 2,998 re-discovered Civil War gravesites.  It isn't "pure" Gettysburg news but I believe all GDG Esteemed Members will enjoy reading the article.

Raymond Bauernhuber
Whitestone, NY


-----Original Message-----
From: civilwar141 at msn.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 8:02 PM
To: civilwar141 at msn.com
Subject: New gravestones for Civil War vets

This story was sent to you by: Ray Bauernhuber

--------------------
New gravestones for Civil War vets 
--------------------

The Associated press

May 29, 2007

Nearly 1,200 gravestones recently acquired by a Brooklyn cemetery were not made for the recently deceased, but for the long forgotten.

The new markers are for some of the more than 3,000 Civil War veterans buried at Green-Wood Cemetery who were recently rediscovered by volunteers after a nearly five-year search.

During a special tribute to the veterans on Memorial Day, attendees viewed the new markers, laid out on their backs in precise rows before they are placed permanently.

Volunteers scoured the grounds, records, government databases, archives and death notices to uncover the names and histories of the veterans buried at the cemetery, but whose headstones had sunk into the ground or were obliterated by time and the elements. They originally expected to find 200 veterans, but instead found 2,998.

"This is a work of historical rescue," said one of the volunteers, Jeffrey Blustein, a medical ethicist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, in Monday's edition of The New York Times. "History isn't just about the rich and famous, it's about all the forgotten people, ordinary people who otherwise would never be known."

Nearly 600,000 people are buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, which was founded in 1838, including artist Jean Michel-Basquiat, composer Leonard Bernstein and Laura Keene, the actress who was on stage when Abraham Lincoln was shot.

It is also where many veterans from every American war are buried, said Richard J. Moylan, the cemetery's president. He said the search to rediscover the Civil War veterans was the first step of a larger effort.

"This is just the beginning of a process of reconnecting with the history of our cemetery - and the history of our country," Moylan said. 

Copyright (c) 2007, Newsday, Inc. 

--------------------

This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nyceme2vr5234220may29,0,4265784.story?coll=ny-nynews-print 

Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com.