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EFFORTS COULD BRING BLACK CIVIL WAR VETERANS VA
HEADSTONES -- The answer from the VA set in
motion
a process that would deliver more than 3,000
headstones
to cemeteries around Beaufort County.
Unidentified Black Civil War soldier.
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Story here...
http://www.myrtlebeach
online.com/news/local/story/234862.html
Story below:
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Efforts could bring black Civil War soldiers VA
headstones
By Brandon Honig
McClatchy Newspapers
BEAUFORT -- Howard Wright contacted the Veterans Administration about
three months ago to request a headstone for his great-great-grandfather,
whom Wright had recently discovered fought in the Civil War.
"If you can prove he has a record, we'll give you a stone," a person at
the VA told Wright.
Then Wright "set a trap" for the VA, he said, asking a hypothetical
question based in reality.
"If somebody had records of all the other soldiers who fought in this
county in the Civil War, could they get stones for all of them too?" he
asked.
The answer was "Yes," which set in motion a process that would deliver
more than 3,000 headstones to cemeteries around Beaufort County, each
inscribed with the name of a black man or woman who served in the Civil
War.
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Wright had already compiled military, census,
genealogical and sales records for all the former slaves who had served on
either side of the war as part of a project he had started in 1982 after
his grandmother died on Hilton Head Island.
After the funeral, a cousin gave Wright a book that included his family's
genealogy, but much of the information was inaccurate.
"It was all wrong - people's ages, the spelling of their names - so I went
around the family and got the correct information," he said.
But he didn't stop there. Two of Wright's teachers at Robert Smalls High
School had ingrained in him a love of black history, so he began
researching the genealogies of all the black families in Beaufort County.
One day, he plans to complete his research for all black families in the
country.
"The goal is to let every black person trace their roots back to the slave
ship [that brought their ancestors to America] if they know their
grandfather's name or their grandmother's name," he said. "Actually we can
even trace back all the way to the region of Africa and the tribe they
came from."
Having already completed 25 years of research, it was easy for Wright to
compile a list of black soldiers and give it to the VA, which delivered
the first 215-pound, marble headstone - for Wright's
great-great-grandfather Ceasar Kirk-Jones - within two weeks. No
headstones have yet followed, but Wright is expecting them all to be
delivered by the end of February.
About 1,000 black Civil War soldiers are buried in Beaufort National
Cemetery, most of whom already have headstones. Only 10 new headstones are
needed for graves in the cemetery because Wright was able to provide the
VA with information on the soldiers that was previously unknown.
The new markers will not be present for a Nov. 10 ceremony at Beaufort
National Cemetery to commemorate the soldiers.
Many black Civil War soldiers' remains could not be located, Wright said,
because they were buried without markers. But in most cases, the soldier's
family could be located, and the new headstone will be placed near the
family.
Headstones of soldiers whose families could not be located will be placed
in predominantly black cemeteries.
-------------------------
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