A history sleuth from Michigan wanted to know: Was Wallace W. Wight of the Iron Brigade buried at Fredericksburg? He and a park researcher figured it out

The grave in question (Peter Maugle/NPS), the registry for a W.W. Wright Jr. and citizen historian Mark Fischer

The recent identification of graves for two Iron Brigade soldiers killed near Fredericksburg, Va., is due to persistent research by a citizen historian and a retired FBI researcher who dug up an 1870 newspaper article that provided crucial information.

Officials credit Mark Fischer of Livonia, Mich., and Steve Morin, a volunteer at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, for gleaning information used to properly identify the graves of Sgt. Wallace Winfield Wight of the 24^th Michigan and Pvt. John S. Waller of the 19th Indiana.

Wight’s grave at Fredericksburg National Cemetery has the wrong surname and Waller’s has only initials (photo below by Peter Maugle/NPS). Records now have been updated to show who lies beneath each stone. 

The turning point in the quest for identification was the discovery of a Detroit Free Press article, something the park said was akin to finding a needle in the haystack.

The effort is remarkable for a number of reasons, starting with how it came to be. Usually, the park initiates an ID search, sometimes from markers that might only have initials or scant information.

An email from Fischer to the park in 2023 was an exception to the rule.

“What makes Wight unique is someone out of the blue contacts the park on his own mission. He started with a name, we start with a grave,” said park historian and ranger Peter Maugle. “This has happened only one other time (to) my knowledge.”

Wight’s headstone at Fredericksburg National Cemetery is mislabeled as W.W. Wright Jr. -- one letter off from Wight. While one would think the mystery should have been solved easily, it took some digging for everything to add up, Maugle told the Picket.

Both soldiers were members of the Army of the Potomac’s Iron Brigade, known for its unflinching courage and high casualties during the war. They were known for wearing black felt Hardee hats.

The brigade, made up of several Midwestern regiments saw limited action at Fredericksburg, but was bloodied at First and Second Manassas, Antietam, South Mountain and Gettysburg. (Iron Brigade hat, below, worn by Elmer D. Wallace, 24th Michigan //  University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library)

While cemetery records have now been updated for Wight (Grave 4953) and Waller (Grave 5588), officials say the discoveries are not definitive. Without DNA samples, it is impossible to formally identify any of the 12,000 soldiers marked as unknown at Fredericksburg.

“We feel like this is 99.9% accurate,” says Maugle of Wight’s identity. “We don’t exhume.”

The headstones will not be corrected, due to their historical nature and other factors. (More about that below).

Fischer’s research actually began with Wight’s father, an officer in the same regiment and who is buried in Livonia. A nearby stone with Wallace Wight’s named appeared to be a cenotaph -- an empty grave for someone who is believed to rest elsewhere. But that was not a certainty.

Fischer reached out the park, wanting to know whether the younger Wight rests there. “I could not find an obituary for Wallace that would have suggested his remains” had been taken home to Michigan.

That first contact did not prove fruitful because park officials could not find a Wight in their cemetery records (though the register did show a Wright, as later research came to show). So Fischer kept at it, looking at diaries, letters and old newspapers.

Subsequent correspondence between Fischer and Morin led to the latter eventually finding the Detroit article, which broke the whole story open.

The lengthy article in December 1870 about a Grand Army of the Republic reunion included information about the deaths of Wight, Waller and other men in 1862 and 1863.

It said the meeting was the second of the regimental association and involved toasts and speeches, resulting in a "pleasant and successful" gathering at Young Men's Hall in Detroit.

After the Wight identification, Morin was able to do the same for Waller, whose grave is marked simply “J.S.W.”

Maugle credits Fischer for instigating the gathering “of the pieces of the puzzle.”

“This guy figured it out for us. He was persistent.”

He became curious about graves in his Michigan town

Fischer, 52, grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich., and lives in Livonia, where he works in IT.

When he and wife moved back to Livonia from Pennsylvania, Fischer stopped by a “cemetery that I have driven by thousands of times.”

He saw the 24^th Michigan on several tombstones. The regiment had fought at Gettysburg. “That struck a chord with me.” Among those buried there was Lt. Col. William Walker Wight (photo below is cenotaph for Wallace W. Wight, courtesy Mark Fischer)

A self-described books guy, Fischer dug into histories, learning the father, then a captain, recruited his son, Wallace, and commanded him at Fredericksburg with Company K. (Another son, Gurdon, was wounded and survived the war.)

Fischer got service records from the National Archives. “The central question to me was, did Wallace make it home?”

He could not find any documentation. The fact that the marker in Livonia is shared with a brother-in-law and is not a government-provided stone made him curious whether Wallace Wight was buried at the Fredericksburg cemetery or nearby.

Morin asked for photos of Wallace’s grave. “The appearance of stone led him to think it to be just a marker.”

Wallace’s cenotaph is about six feet from his father’s grave and close to that of his sister. The marker also lists his brother-in-law, according to Fischer.

“How does the father lose the son and carry on? That is what I am trying to understand.”

Fredericksburg team's dogged pursuit to honor dead

Over the years, Maugle (right) and his team have been able to “better” identify about 200 graves at Fredericksburg. The process comes with a host of challenges.

First off, those who opened and operated the cemetery 160 years ago had little time to pursue identification, and there was no national cemetery system.

Remains -- sometimes only a few bones – arrived in dribs and drabs between 1866 and 1868. Most came with no name or, as possible in Wight’s case, with a weathered wooden marker. Stone markers did not replace wooden ones for several years.

The park pointed out in a Facebook post in September no soldier with the name Wight appears on Army rolls or casualty lists. The soldier and several comrades were killed on Dec. 13, 1862, and buried twice, including at Pollock’s Farm in Stafford County, before Wight was moved to Fredericksburg National Cemetery.

The graves at Fredericksburg were wooden until the mid-1870s (NPS).

Maugle told the Picket the wooden marker placed above Wight had to survive three years until reburial parties cam. “It may have been degraded until it is barely visibly.”

Morin wrote in his report about the grave it is possible that the misinterpretation of the surname ‘Wight’ as ‘Wright,’ sergeant as private and the missing company and regimental designations could be due to the grave marker’s exposure to the Virginia elements for several years, particularly if the inscriptions were written in pencil.

Initial emails led to no match for soldier

Most soldiers did not carry ID tags and unlike at other Civil War cemeteries, Maugle said, few of the Union soldiers passed away at nearby hospitals, where identification would have been easier. “They were buried on the field very hastily.”

The Fredericksburg cemetery has dead from four major battlefields and names were entered on the register – which, of course, is unsearchable – apparently when they arrived.

In Wight’s case, he was listed in the register as W.W. Wright Jr., along with a notation of burial at Pollock’s Farm prior to relocation to Fredericksburg. No regiment or rank was listed and the soldier was mistakenly identified as a private. The notation says “US Vol.” (Click image, courtesy NPS, to enlarge. Wright is near the bottom)

When Fischer first contacted the park, they only discussed a soldier named Wight. No one brought up the possibility of him being listed as Wright. Officials searched the register for anyone with the 24^th Michigan and the name Wight. No match.

Unfortunately, no one had yet seen the newspaper article, which showed the sergeant was buried at Pollock’s Farm before the postwar move of remains to the current cemetery.

The email exchange ended in a dead end. “We kind of threw our hands up,” said Maugle.

Fischer got back to work.

One find led to another, to another, to another

Sgt. Wallace Winfield Wight, 18, and several others in the 24^th Michigan were killed on December 13, 1862. He and at least one other soldier were believed to be decapitated by a Confederate shell.

Wight’s remains were recovered by his father (left).

The history of the 24th Michigan by O. B. Curtis says, "It was truly a mournful event when the Captain of Company K, that night, searched for the trunkless head of his son upon the battlefield, while the canister was whistling above him, and placed it with the young boy's remains for burial."

The men were first buried on the south side of the Rappahannock River.

“During the Chancellorsville campaign, his body was disinterred on April 30, 1863, and reburied at the Pollock House on the north side of the river. According to a May 1, 1863, letter written by Sullivan Dexter Green, Company F, 24^th MI, Sergeant Wight’s grave was still fully marked when his body was moved.” Morin wrote. “Diary entries written on June 10, 1863, by Lieutenant Colonel Mark Flanigan, 24^th MI, detailed a visit he made to the grave of ‘W.W. Wight, Jr.’ near the Pollock House on the north side of the Rappahannock River.”

Much of the above information was researched by Fischer and relayed to Maugle and Morin (right, NPS photo), who then found the newspaper article. Fischer said Green was essentially an embedded reporter for the Free Press while serving with the regiment.

Maugle said the newspaper article, while it does not mention the Pollock house by name, makes reference to "the hospital building ... on the opposite side of the road near the bank of the rive," narrowing it down. 

At that point, the park thumbed through the register looking for burials at Pollock’s Farm.

They came across W.W. Wright Jr.

“That name stuck out then,” said Maugle.

Bingo.

The mislabeled Wright marker includes a “Jr.”, likely because the teen and his father had the same initials.

Morin then turned his attention to Waller, whose grave is marked “J.S.W.”

According to the park, his grave lies between two casualties from the Army of the Potomac's crossing of the Rappahannock River at the outset of the Chancellorsville campaign in late April 1863. Cemetery records indicate the occupant is a U.S. soldier who died in 1863 and was initially buried at Fitzhugh's Farm in Stafford County.

Overlay shows Pollock's Mill/Farm in center, farm of Henry Fitzhugh (NPS)

“The 1870 article lists the names of several soldiers originally interred at the farm. One of them, Private John S. Waller of the 19th Indiana, fit the description and is likely the occupant of this grave. Cemetery records were updated to reflect that deduction.”

There are no known photos of Waller or Wallace Wight.

Why the NPS does not alter historic markers

When the park publicized the Wight story in September, some commenters asked why his marker could not be replaced with appropriate information.

In a nutshell, National Park Service policy does not allow the altering of historic gravestones due to errors of fact.

Lt. Col. Flanigan wrote about visit to Wight grave at Pollock's Farm (NPS)

Maugle said one reason is the cost and labor for replacing them. Some would receive a stone with a newer design, affecting the historic nature of the original.

There are some exceptions, such as if a tree fell and destroyed a marker.

There is another reason – going back to the concept that identification cannot be 100 percent confirmed. “What if someone comes in and says it belongs to someone else. We are in a quandary and we decided to make an adjustment to the grave,” said Maugle.

The citizen historian is invited to memorial event

Back in Michigan, Fischer wants to concentrate on what started this journey – a biography of William Walker Wight.

“Researching the father is how I became aware of the uncertainty about his son's final resting place,” he said. “A father lost his son under extraordinary circumstances.”

Lt. Col. Wight soldiered on as an officer – he was wounded at Gettysburg -- a citizen and a patriot.

Fischer has been invited to the park’s 2025 Memorial Day activities, notably a May 24 luminaria. Some 15,300 candles will be placed in bags to brighten the Fredericksburg National Cemetery. (Photo NPS)

Maugle said Fischer will primarily speak about Wallace Wight’s life and service.