A few images.
In our rounds to family burial plots in the region I have made it a habit to find the old, seemingly forgotten veterans markers. In doing so we have found headstones dating back to the Revolutionary War, mostly left untended.
Such as
The first two are Civil War veterans, and the stones are no longer legible. We ask people we meet each year if they know anything of them, so far no one does. My mother in law has visited the church that maintains the cemetery and they have no records farther back than 1880.
Several years ago we cleared out around them, they are well into the treeline, and found the bronze flag stands. That first year I put flags there, a VFW post in Mercer County replaced them each year since.
This one
is one of my wifes favorites. He died in 1868, so I believe he had to have been an 1812 or Mexican War vet. There is part of a unit designation on the bottom, my son suggested etching over it with a piece of paper to read it so we will be heading back today.
This one has no marker left, apparently it was a piece of sandstone, now just a lump the bronze placard is stood in.
I encourage as many people as I can to start finding the old graves, the ones sinking into obscurity as the forest and time over takes them. At the least to remember they did live, even if the names are lost.
That is what we are supposed to do on this day.
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