Cemetery trip, post-mortem

I did make it to Evergreen and St. Joseph Cemeteries today and found somewhere around 80 graves of Civil War Veterans. I took pictures of each and recorded their names, units and any other information off their headstones. It was quite a bit of work, but the weather was pleasant and I'm pleased with what I accomplished.

Evergreen includes at least 75 of the veterans, but they are all in one section, so I did not have to do much searching. The biggest problem was having to move grass and weeds from in front of the stones in order to reveal what was engraved in them.

St. Joseph's was one I had never been to. I had a list of 5 or 6 names to search for, but, unfortunately, they are not all in one area, so I had to do a lot of searching. The cemetery is not nearly as big as Evergreen, but is not tiny, and is on the side of a hill, so the walking was not always easy.

I found 3 of the names I was looking for. I am disappointed not to have found the others, but I did find 2 other Civil War veterans that were not on my list, so that is good. I just did not feel like making a 2nd trek up and down that hill today to try to find the other names, especially since some of the headstones are tough to read, so you have to get close to them to see the names and make sure you're not skipping one you need to find. I'll go back some other day, but I'm happy with the progress I've started.

I have uploaded my pictures to my computer and added the soldier names and units to them, and am now going to look on the National Park Service's Soldiers and Sailors website, which is an incredible tool for Civil War researchers (though it's not set up for the entire Navy yet.)

Here's a link to the main solider page. http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/soldiers.cfm

I've found a few matches so far, but this part of the task will be another that will require some effort and as much as I enjoy this, I'm not going go spend ALL my weekend on it. This will give me something to keep working on for a while and hopefully I'll find a lot of information here.

I guess I now need to decide how to format and store all this information, but for now, I'm putting it all in one document.

Anyway, it was a good, productive, enjoyable day today. I was fortunate that a normal July 90 degree day did not show up or my work would have been much more difficult.

Cemetery trip

I think I'm going to stop by Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate tomorrow to take pictures in the section where Union soldiers are buried as well as to list the names and other information of the soldiers buried there, including Medol of Honor winner Williams Horsfall, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.

http://www.americandrummerboy.com/American_Drummer_Boy/The_Real_Drummer_Boys/Entries/2008/10/17_William_Horsfall.html

I also plan to stop by a local public library to look up microfilm newspaper records of some other soliders, whose headstones I found in a small country cemetery down in Grant's Lick.

I think I'm going to try to assemble a book listing as many Civil War soldiers buried in Campbell County as I can find. I started working on a similar list a couple of years ago and want to re-start that now. I'll probably check with a couple people I know who may have done similar research just to be sure I'm not duplicating it, but even if someone else has done similar work, I think it will be an enjoyable, educational and perhaps humbling task for me. I hope I can find plenty of names and then info about their units and lives as well. It might be a challenge, but I want to do some research and this is something I will enjoy.

I'll post more about this as I make progress and make decisions about what to do next. There are many cemeteries in the county, though Evergreen is the biggest. I know this will be a lot of work, but it will be worth the effort, I do firmly believe.