Walking the Berkshires: Unknown: A Local History Civil War Mystery

I came upon this grave marker recently in Cornwall Hollow Cemetery. It caught my eye as a government issued headstone of the "Civil War" type, authorized in the 1870s for the graves of Union soldiers (and also was used for unmarked graves of veterans of earlier wars). Given its low status position over at the very edge of the graveyard, I wondered whether it would prove to belong to a black soldier, for there were social and racial hierarchies even in New England graveyards and I often find veterans of the 29th Connecticut colored infantry in such places. What I found instead has left me searching for explanations.

This weathered marble stone has no name or associated company and regiment. It is inscribed simply "Unknown U.S. Soldier". If this private cemetery were near some battleground or a place that had seen the passage of armies, I would not have given it another thought. But this is northwest Connecticut, hundreds of miles from the battlefields of the Civil War, and in a part of the state which has never seen a military engagement since its settlement.

The presence of this artifact at this location raises many questions. How did it come to be here? Are there remains associated with the grave marker, and how were they associated with Cornwall, Connecticut? The marker was provided at no cost for veterans by the government, but someone covered the expense of the plot, and if the soldier died far from Cornwall, also paid to transport the remains here.

Graduate school taught me the value of testing the assumptions of every explanatory hypothesis. The available evidence at the outset consists of the stone itself and the site where I found it, which is a matter both for the archeologist and the historian. My initial inquiry in Cornwall has determined that neither the historical society nor the town clerk, nor the sexton have any knowledge of a written record beyond what is recorded on the stone, nor of how it came to be here. So let us begin with the stone.

As the photograph at the top of the page illustrates, this marble headstone is discolored and weathered, consistent with other military grave markers of its time period. It is of a "Civil War" type used for Union veteran's graves beginning in 1873, and authorized for use in private cemeteries in 1879. This establishes the earliest date in which this artifact would have appeared at this site. Such markers were in use until a significant design change after WWI. This one has straight rather than curved sides coming to a point at the bottom of the sunken shield, which is the earliest variation on this design. Although unmarked graves of U.S. veterans of from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Indian Campaigns and Spanish American War were furnished with this type of headstone, (Confederates got their own from the U.S. government in the early 20th century), this stone - because of its apparent age and the sheer number of soldiers involved - is most likely for an unknown Civil War soldier.

This is not the first design for grave markers of unknown U.S. soldiers, however. According to this site"

"In 1873 Secretary of War William W. Belknap adopted the first design for stones to be erected in national cemeteries. For the unknown dead, the stone was a block of marble or durable stone six inches square, and 30 inches long. The top and four inches of the sides of the upper part were finished and the number of the grave cut on the top...The use of stone blocks for marking graves in national cemeteries was discontinued on October 21, 1903, and the graves were marked with the same design as those furnished for the known dead."

It is possible that this practice had already been followed in private cemeteries long before 1903, but I do not know how regular it was. Two of the federal contractors for Union grave markers were located in the southern Berkshires in Stockbridge and Lenox, Massachusetts. Quite possibly the stone was manufactured there.

Coincidentally, there is another Civil War connection between the little cemetery in Cornwall Hollow, Connecticut and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Major General John Sedgwick came from here and is buried beneath a prominent monument in the Cornwall Hollow Cemetery, with another monument to his memory located across the road. A branch of the Sedgwick family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts from Cornwall, where his cousin Catherine Maria Sedgwick was prominent fiction writer.

That is about all that I can surmise about the stone itself. There is also its position in the cemetery to consider, in a low status plot at the very edge of the graveyard. This is not a public memorial, though it is a dutiful acknowledgment of the military service of an unknown soldier with a government headstone in a private cemetery. I believe that while the stone itself may have been moved within the cemetery and probably replaced an earlier marker of some kind, there were indeed once unknown remains with which is is associated.

How did an unknown U.S. soldier of this time period come to Cornwall? It is hard to imagine a scenario where remains of an unknown soldier from the Civil War were at least partially identified such that they could be positively to assigned to a soldier from this particular rural community in Connecticut. Cornwall Hollow is in the northeast corner of the town, but even if we consider Goshen, and Canaan/Falls Village as well it still seems implausible. Remains that preserved evidence of a Corps badge colored by division, a regiment number and company letter would stand a good chance of being positively identified unless there were several candidates from the same company who came from the same place and died in the same place.

Blaikie Hines "Civil War Volunteer Sons of Connecticut" has a wealth of detail about the service and casualty figures for every Connecticut regiment and community. The majority of the enlistments in this communities was in the :county regiment": the 2nd CT Heavy Artillery (40% of those credited to Cornwall, 34% of Canaan's soldiers, 53% from Goshen). Yet even on their worst days of the war, such as Cold Harbor where the Heavy's took heavy casualties and remained under fire for days thereafter, the number of dead in these communities was very low. Cornwall suffered 11 casualties on June 1st at Cold Harbor but only 1 battlefield death (another was wounded mortally). Canaan lost just 2 at Cold Harbor and 2 at Antietam and the remainder were single fatalities. Goshen lost 2 at Winchester. At no time did these communities suffer multiple battlefield deaths from the same unit (or any combination of units) except at Cold Harbor where Goshen and Cornwall together lost three from the 2nd C.T.H.A. This strongly suggests that there was not a situation where a group of men from the same communities died and became unknowns at the same place.

I also discount the likelihood that some private individual cared enough about unknowns (perhaps having lost but not recovered a loved one in the war) to pay for the transportation of the remains of an unknown to stand for them all and then bury at the edge of a private cemetery, procuring a government issue headstone somewhere along the way.

The only other explanation I can think of involves considerable conjecture. It might have been that a Union veteran was passing through the area, alone, unknown in the community, and died here before he could leave. This might have happened after mustering out - probably not as a deserter because he would have avoided drawing attention to himself identifiable as a soldier - or as an invalid separated from his friends. He might have been buried "in a pauper's grave", and his original wooden marker replaced with government issue sometime thereafter. It would have been a lonely end, and in that case someone did the decent thing and buried him with recognition of his service, if not his name.

I honestly do not know the answer. But I find the possibilities fascinating. Any readers willing to test my assumptions or offer other insights would be most welcome.

Postscript (November 6th, 2009): Remarkable what data may be lurking in Google books. In a February, 1876 record of Congressional testimony regarding contracts to furnish soldier's headstones, I find that the contract for the original headstone blocks for unknown soldiers of the Civil War was awarded to one D.C. Sage, of Cornwall, Connecticut. The unknown soldier grave marker in Cornwall Hollow was not one of Sage's blocks, but could have been a later replacement.