GDG- Unknown Graves

[Richard M Kadas]

Being an unidentified KIA seems to have been a widely acknowledged, and feared combat outcome of many Union troops. In the absence of a universal Army program of troop identification, we see reports of troops pinning pieces of paper with their personal identification data onto their uniforms in expectation of going into combat. Given the preceding practice it seems  that the unidentified number of Union troops buried in the national cemetaries would be at least one third and possibly much higher. I remember visiting the Shiloh national military cemetery where the percentage of unknows is 66%. Of course Shiloh happened earlier and was in the less civilized Western theater. Does anyone know if the percentage of unknown Union burials decreases as the war goes on? Thanks for providing the statistics for an interesting aspect of the ACW, and arousing my interest in a new area.
  Dick.

John Gross <confederate at worldnet.att.net> wrote: 
  Esteemed GDG Member Contributes:


Keith,

Thank you for the response. Since my initial post I have begun to check some
of the cemeteries one by one, and although Dyer's figures may be off for
some of the individual cemeteries his overall percentage of Unknowns may be
correct.

Regards,

John Gross
confederate at att.net


From: "keith mackenzie"
>
> John: It's funny, but I just got this book that deals specifically with
this in a chapter titled "NAMING"
>
> the author says that 40% of Yankees and a greater percentage of rebels
"...---perished without names."
> I wonder if the author used the same stats you did?
> K.


>
> Can this information be correct from Dyer's Compendium?
>
> Pages 19 and 20 lists "National Cemeteries and Their Locations", with the
> number of known and unknown buried in each. For Gettysburg he lists a
total
> of 3,585 buried with 1,611 unknown. This comes out to 45% unknown graves!
>
> Interestingly this is the same percentage (rounding off) as all the
> cemeteries combined, which is 325,230 total burials with 148,833 unknown.
>
> I know there are many unknown graves but almost 50% seems high.
>
> Thanks for any comments.
>
> John Gross
> confederate at att.net
>
> /

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