The partial remains of three Union soldiers have been buried at Fredericksburg National Cemetery. Inside their tiny casket is a trove of military buttons, a coat remnant and other items that got mixed up with their bones

May 2 burial (City of Fredericksburg), examination of burial bundle and Connecticut button (Dovetail/Mead & Hunt)

Following the Civil War, the United States government undertook an exhaustive effort to ensure a proper resting place for Union soldiers who had given the “last full measure of devotion.”

Work parties scoured battlefields, back yards, pastures and countless other places to collect 300,000 bodies that were interred at 73 national cemeteries. Remains arrived in dribs and drabs at Fredericksburg National Cemetery in Virginia between 1866 and 1868. Most came with no name: Of the 15,243 soldiers, about 85 percent are unknown.

Contractors hired by the government often retrieved skulls and larger portions of the skeleton, leaving most behind. Such was the case with three Federal soldiers buried together at a site near Sophia Street in downtown Fredericksburg. They died at a hospital set up during the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862.

Fredericksburg Superintendent Lewis Rogers at cemetery burial (City of Fredericksburg)

Ten years after the discovery of the partial remains, the men were rendered full honors on May 2 when a small casket holding leg, toe, finger and other bones was buried at the national cemetery.

Among those on hand were Mayor Kerry Devine, members of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and Lewis Rogers, superintendent of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park. Assisting the reburial effort was the Missing in America Project.

“The placement of these remains closes an important and long journey for these men. They left home at a young age to fight for a cause they believed in, only to lose their lives hundreds of miles from home,” said Kerri Barile Tambs, senior practice lead at Dovetail Cultural Resource Group, which was hired by the city to conduct archaeological examinations during the Riverfront Park project and studied the bones.

There’s another fascinating aspect of the story: Barile Tambs (left) and other Dovetail staffers analyzed a “bundle” found with the men's remaining bones. The jumble of items included fabric from a uniform, military buttons, a pack of straight pins and a small bottle. They were likely kept in pants pockets.

Among the uniform buttons was one denoting Connecticut.

“The three individuals were buried as they died -- wearing their uniforms. By the time people came back … to remove parts of the burials, partial decomposition had occurred,” said Barile Tambs.

“These workers removed some of the bones but left others jumbled together. In the process, it appears that the coat of one of the soldiers was dislodged from the bones, ‘balled up,’ and put back in the hole with the bones they left behind.”

14th Connecticut, other units used house as hospital

A November 2015 article by The Free Lance-Star newspaper detailed the find near the Rowe-Goolrick house, which was constructed in the 1750s to face onto one of Fredericksburg's original ferry roads (and thus was perpendicular to Sophia Street).

The discovery was made after a Masonic hall next to the Rowe-Goolrick house site was torn down to make room for Riverfront Park and city officials called Dovetail in to study the site.

Bright green area is where the human remains were found in 2015 (NPS image)

Dovetail performed archaeological work and archival studies in the area four times between 2013 and 2019. The team located thousands of artifacts spanning from the precontact period through the 1970s.

A 2019 blog post on the Dovetail website details the discovery of several building foundations during the effort.

The Rowe-Goolrick house  was demolished in 1973 to make room for a parking lot that is now part of the park along the Rappahannock River. A fascinating 1863 photograph of the city shows the Rowe-Goolrick house. It was then the home of Absalom Rowe, a cattleman and future mayor of the town. Near it was the Eliza Eubank home, also shown in the picture. It still survives and may be the oldest building in Fredericksburg (circa 1746).

Wartime image of the town, shows Rowe-Goolrick home at right foreground, 
facing the Eliza Eubank home at left (Library of Congress)

A recent National Park Service page about the discovery of the burial site in town said the 14^th Connecticut Infantry used the Rowe-Goolrick house, outbuildings and grounds as a hospital.

Second Lt. Charles Lyman of the regiment wrote about witnessing a leg amputation on a soldier placed on a “rude operating table under a big buttonball tree in the yard.”

The NPS said the remains of the three soldiers showed no evidence of amputations.

Archaeologists determined the remains belonged to U.S. soldiers by using radiocarbon dating and the context in which they were found and associated artifacts, including uniform buttons, according to the city.

More about 113 items found in the 'bundle'

Barile Tambs told the Picket in an email the bundle was about 2-3 feet below the surface in what appeared to be a root cellar.

The NPS page provides these details about what her team found:

Straight pins were found among the jumble of material (Dovetail/Mead & Hunt)

“The X-ray revealed a total of 113 artifacts in the small bundle. These materials included eagle buttons, a small patent medicine bottle, straight pins, a pocket watch key, a small horsehair brush, and a cuff-size Connecticut button. The identification of the Connecticut button was especially significant because the 14th Connecticut was the only Connecticut unit in the 3rd Division at the Battle of Fredericksburg, providing additional information as to the potential troops who occupied the site.”

Dovetail – now a part of Mead & Hunt -- does not know anything about the straight pins. The bottle (right, photo Dovetail/Mead & Hunt) is believed to have contained a patent medicine most likely used to treat syphilis. The piece of cloth measured maybe 8 inches by 5 inches.

The archaeologist said the disturbance of the first grave near the Rowe-Goolrick house made it difficult to understand how the men were buried.

“The parts that were left behind were dislodged and jumbled thus no longer representing a standard skeletal position,” Barile Tambs said. “As such, we can't say much on the exact original configuration of the burials at the time of death -- we only have evidence that was left behind … during the partial removal process.”

Full honors for soldiers 160 years later

Fredericksburg National Cemetery sits on Marye’s Heights, a strategic area located southwest of the town’s historic downtown. During the Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate troops held the high terrain and successfully repelled numerous Union attacks.

Before this month, the last burial of a soldier or veteran there was in 1945. Subsequent burials were spouses. The cemetery has been officially closed to interments since 2010.

Eagle buttons found amid bones, other artifacts in city of Fredericksburg (Dovetail/Mead & Hunt)

The city asked the NPS to bury the remains in 2017, with the need to find a location at the cemetery that had no evidence of a previous interment. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources also was consulted.

The Covid pandemic slowed the project. A 2021 effort to find a suitable plot came to a stop when archaeologists found a long-covered road and brick-lined culvert. A new location was found two years later.

“This 10-year process established protocols should other Civil War remains be found in the area to expedite the respectful reburial of these brave individuals,” Barile Tambs told the Picket. 

Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and dignitaries at service (City of Fredericksburg)

The May 2 ceremony included a dozen members of the SUVCW, including a color guard.

According to the city, the National Cemetery Administration has provided the headstone, which will match others in the cemetery and include the epitaph “Unknown.” Given the soldiers are unknown, officials do not where the first part of their remains were interred in the 1860s.

I asked Barile Tambs what became of the bundle.

“It has all been reburied with the remains. They are all grave goods,” she wrote.

Gettysburg to remember fallen from Civil War to Vietnam: Pliny White lingered a month after losing arm; Abel G. Peck fell early in battle

Pliny White (top) and Abel G. Peck are buried at the park cemetery

Some of America’s war heroes are famous, their names etched on buildings, remembered in the movies or painted on the transom of a Navy ship.

But the vast majority are lesser-known. This Memorial Day weekend, Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site will share a few of their stories. The program at Gettysburg National Cemetery will discuss the site's creation and highlight several service members, from the Civil War through the Vietnam. They were among 6,000 men and women laid to rest in the hallowed ground between 1863 and 1971.

The free, 90-minute guided program takes place on Saturday, May 27, at 6 pm. Meet at the Taneytown Road entrance of the cemetery.

Park spokesman Jason Martz told the Picket that two Civil War soldiers will be among those featured: Sgt. Abel G. Peck of the 24^th Michigan and Pvt. Pliny Fisk White of the 14^th Vermont. Peck is believed to be buried at the cemetery as unknown.

Here’s more about the two soldiers:

Pvt. Pliny Fisk White, 14^th Vermont, Addison County

When the war brought out in 1861, White was encouraged to stay home to take care of his widowed mother. But he decided to enlist in October 1862 for a nine-month term. After months stationed in the Washington, D.C., area, the regiment was attached to the Army of the Potomac.

While in the army, White frequently wrote home. His correspondence is excerpted from “Among the Things That Were: Letters of a Vermont Farm Family,” by Barbara Freund (2001)

White is buried in Vermont section (Gettysburg National Military Park

He wrote his sister in January 1863:

“After Virginia comes forth from her fiery trial purified it will be a good place to plant northern institutions. In looking at the devastation on every side occasioned by the war, one can but be reminded that the too long unheeded cry of oppressed is being amply avenged. As the tide of oppression commenced here & rolled southward so it may be yes must be with the merited retribution which slavery thus far has met.”

White wrote a letter to Lemira, believed to be his fiancée, on the day before his unit went to the front:

“The chances are very favorable that to-day we shall go into battle. Though it is said that we are to be held in reserve. I do not doubt but before the fight is over we shall be called. I am ready and willing to go into battle and can trust myself in the hands of Him who is our only trust. Though I do not fear, yet it may be if I go into battle this may be the last time I shall write to you. Already the firing has commenced but not briskly. I would like to see you, but as I cannot I thought just a word would be better than nothing. I love you as ever and think of you often, and if we meet no more on earth, I hope I shall be worthy to meet you where there will be no more parting words.”

On July 3, the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 25-year-old was wounded by a shell fragment as his regiment engaged with a Florida brigade that was supporting Pickett's Charge.

“His shattered arm was amputated soon after the battle and Pliny was taken to a field hospital set up in Gettysburg's Lutheran Seminary,” the National Park Service says. “There the doctors and nurses believed Pliny would recover.”

Nearly a month after his wounding, on July 31, White wrote his sister again:

“Through the kindness of a good brother I will tell you how I am. I would not have you mourn on account of my condition for I feel reconciled to my lot, although it is hard. You know that we are taught in God’s Holy Word that ‘all things shall work together for the good of those that love God.’ I have excellent care and good nurses, who are doing all they can for me and take a deep interest in my recovery -- I have good food also. I’ve had some fever and my pulse is quite high yet.”

White did not recover and died on Aug. 5 at a field hospital set up in Gettysburg's Lutheran Seminary. He was later buried in the Vermont section of the national cemetery.

“Had he survived Gettysburg, he would have by that date been back at home with his family in Vermont, for the nine-month term of service of the 14th Vermont expired in late July and the regiment was mustered out of service,” says the NPS. (14th Vermont monument at Gettysburg, Wikipedia)

Sgt. Abel G. Peck, 24^th Michigan

The 24^th Michigan was organized in Detroit in August 1862 and became part of the famed Iron Brigade. The regiment had seen limited action until Gettysburg, but it had a real baptism of blood on those three July days.

At age 42, Abel Peck was an old soldier, by standards of the day. The farmer was a father of two girls and twice a widower. “There must have been something about Peck's bravery and integrity for he was soon after selected to carry the regimental flag of the 24th Michigan, a post of high and great honor in a Civil War regiment,” says the park service.

24th Michigan veterans at Gettysburg in 1889

Peck wrote his daughter Alice in August 1862, “With a heart beating high with emotion I attempt to address you. it becomes my duty to say to you that i have enrolled my self as a volunteer for our Country and its flag. pain full as it is I feel it to be my duty.”

And a letter to a few months later: “… if we have to fight I expect to have to take my part and if I fal you must not morn for I think I cam dooing my duty and you must think that the honor of having a Father die in the defense of his Country will make up for the loss you will sustane ..”

Peck was felled on July 1, early in the battle, as the Iron Brigade clashed with Confederate troops in pitched fighting. His commanding officer, Col. Henry Morrow, would later eulogize Peck, calling him a "brave and faithful soldier," and "a man greatly admired for his almost saintly character."

Shot through by twenty-three bullets and its staff splintered, the flag was reduced to a tatter seen here, according to the Michigan History Center. The regiment fulfilled its vow to protect the banner: the flag was never surrendered. (At left, a small piece of the flag, GNMP)

Peck was buried where he fell, but when the color bearer was reinterred at the national cemetery, his remains were not identified and he is likely marked as unknown.

The 24^th Michigan’s casualties at Gettysburg were staggering: It went into action with 496 officers and men. Some 89 were killed or mortally wounded, 218 wounded and 56 captured, for a total of 363 casualties. Five color bearers were killed. But the regiment helped buy time for Union forces to occupy the vital Cemetery Ridge.

She wants to tell the stories of USCT troops

For 50 years, Corene McDaniel has walked through the rows at Mound City National Cemetery in southern Illinois to visit her father. But it was only a few years ago that she noticed an abbreviation chiseled into some of the oldest white headstones: USCT. It stands for United States Colored Troops -- the name given to about 200,000 black men who fought for the Union in the Civil War. McDaniel has identified 350 USCT graves. McDaniel, of Carbondale, hopes her records can be added to the directory at the cemetery museum, allowing future visitors to more easily find the graves. She also wants to tell their stories. • Article

First headstone installed at Poplar Grove

(Courtesy National Park Service)

The first new, upright headstone at Poplar Grove National Cemetery at Petersburg National Battlefield in Virginia was installed on Tuesday. The marker is for the grave of W.H. Johnson, who served in the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT). According to one website, a William Johnson served with the 23rd USCT and was originally buried at Avery farm. See story below for details on the 18-month rehabilitation project that will replace headstones that were cut and placed on the ground more than 80 years ago.