Four Unknown Dead At Yorktown Receive New
Headstones, Burial Rites
By Scott C. Boyd
(July 2009 Civil War News)

YORKTOWN, Va. — Four previously unknown Union soldiers now lie in graves with their names engraved into new headstones, thanks to Thomas L. Grund Jr. The headstones at the Yorktown National Cemetery were formally dedicated on May 24, following the annual Memorial Day commemoration.

Grund’s discovery of the men’s names came from his volunteer work entering data into the National Graves Registration Database, sponsored by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW).

The SUVCW is the successor to the Union veterans’ Grand Army of the Republic organization, analogous to the Sons of Confederate Veterans and its predecessor, United Confederate Veterans.

The SUVCW began its National Graves Registration Project to create a registry of all known Union veterans’ graves in 1996. In 2005 the project went on the Internet and became the National Graves Registration Database.

Grund, a Suffolk, Va., resident, has been a member of the SUVCW since 2001. He’s retired from the military and now works for a defense contractor. He belongs to the Col. James D. Brady Camp 63, qualifying for membership through his ancestor, Pvt. Jacob W. Moyer, Co. A, 48th Pennsylvania Infantry.

As one of the camp’s two graves registration officers, Grund researches and enters names of area Union veterans’ graves into the database.

In January 2008, he began researching known Union graves at Yorktown National Cemetery, where only one-third of the roughly 2,200 burials are known. He discovered some interesting discrepancies in the three lists of soldiers’ names he found on the Internet.

The first list, on the National Park Service’s Web page for the cemetery, listed every known person buried there alphabatically. The second was from the Interment.net, with transcriptions from the cemetery done in 2003-2005 by two researchers.

The third list was from the York County (Va.) Historical Committee, a local government Web site. It included 10 names not found on the other two lists, but the additional names were only fragmentary.

“They looked like they were probably what was left over when a wooden tombstone had eroded,” Grund said.

He hypothesizes that the wooden marker for a soldier buried in 1862 might have deteriorated by 1866, when many soldiers’ remains in the area were moved to the newly established national cemetery in Yorktown, causing the loss of information on the marker.

Grund tried to learn the full identities of the 10 new men using the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System (CWSSS) without much success until he searched for Private Demouth of the 7th New York.

There was no Demouth in the unit, according to the CWSSS. However, on a whim, Grund dropped the “New York” designation and got a hit on “Demouth, Harrison, Private, Company I, 7th New Jersey Infantry.”

While doing subsequent research on soldiers from New Jersey, Grund found an 1876 book online listing the soldiers from that state in the war. Demouth was not only named but was said to be buried at Yorktown. The trail was getting hotter.

However, the book said he was buried in “Section B, Grave 164” at Yorktown. The historical committee list showed him buried in “Tomb 468.”

Grund discovered there were two numbering systems for the graves. After comparing old grave numbers for known Union soldiers with their grave numbers in modern lists, Grund realized that Grave 164 in Section B at Yorktown was the same location as Tomb 468.

In April 2008, Grund decided it was time to contact the Colonial National Historical Park, which includes Yorktown. He made his case about Demouth to Supervisory Park Ranger Diane Depew. After studying the Yorktown cemetery archives, she confirmed for Grund that the name Demouth was associated with grave 468.

Depew said that the National Park Service (NPS) in the 1920s redesignated a number of gravestones with partial information as “unknown.” This could explain how the information on Demouth’s marker was lost and how the name disappeared from his headstone.

Depew told Grund he would need to produce something more than Internet evidence before the NPS would accept his claim that the unknown soldier in grave 468 was Pvt. Harrison Demouth of the 7th N.J.

Six weeks later Grund received Demouth’s Compiled Service Record that he ordered from the National Archives. It confirmed the soldier’s name, state, regiment, company, date of death and place of burial. It said Demouth was buried at Yorktown.

Demouth enlisted and mustered in Sept. 20, 1861, at Trenton, N.J. He died of typhoid fever at Ship Point, Va., on May 1, 1862, probably in the hospital known as “Camp Misery.”

When Grund showed Demouth’s record to Depew, she told him she believed he had a match.

In addition to identifying Demouth, Grund said a genealogist who assisted him believes she has located a descendant whom he will contact.

Grund was able to identify the graves of another three of those 10 names he found. He credits the NPS staff at Yorktown as his partners in the effort, praising the assistance of Park Rangers Depew and Robbie Smith and Superintendent Dan Smith.

“The rangers could have written me off as a crackpot and said ‘This guy’s crazy’ and that would have been the end of it,” Grund said, “and they didn’t do that.”

“When they saw reasonable evidence, they actually ran with it, and it took a lot of work on their part,” he said. “They compared it with their own archives, convinced their own superintendent there and then they had to go up the Department of the Interior chain of command.”

The culmination of this was installation of four new headstones in time for Memorial Day this year.
There were two ceremonies on May 24. The first was the annual Yorktown National Cemetery event. The standard ceremony was modified to include recognition of the four new headstones.

The second ceremony was based on a 100-year-old ritual for the burial of Union veterans, according to Grund. It was performed separately for each of the four soldiers.

The ritual featured the placing of a forage cap, musket, canteen and cartridge box on the grave, below the headstone. A soldier in full uniform, armed with a musket with fixed bayonet, stood guard.

Then information from the fallen soldier’s service record was read, he was praised for his patriotism and service, flowers were laid and a poem was read.

Superintendent Smith said giving names to the previously unknown soldiers made it “an overwhelming ceremony.”

“We were very privileged to have [Grund and his SUVCW camp] do the rededication ceremony there on Memorial Day.”

The Other Three
Pvt. Robert Rumney, Cos. B and F, 65th New York Infantry Regiment, the 1st U.S. Chasseurs. Enlisted and mustered in with Co. B on Aug. 3, 1861, at New York City at age 38. Transferred to Co. F Sept. 1, 1861. Died at Camp Winfield Scott, near Warwick Court House, Va., April 18, 1862.

Cpl. Emile Lambert, 3rd Independent Battery, New York Light Artillery, Mott’s Battery. Enlisted and mustered in as private Nov. 15, 1861, at New York City at age 30. Promoted March 4, 1862. Killed in action at the Battle of Lee’s Mill (Dam Number 1 or Burnt Chimneys), Newport News, Va., on April 16, 1862, when a Confederate artillery shell struck the wheel of his gun.

Sgt. Joshua Richardson, Co. F, 74th New York Infantry Regiment, Excelsior Brigade. Enlisted July 14, 1861, at Tidioute, Pa. Mustered in as sergeant on Aug. 20, 1861, at Camp Scott, Va., at age 35. Killed in action at the Battle of Williamsburg, Va., May 5, 1862.

He fell in the heaviest fighting of that battle, at a place simply known as “The Ravine.” It was Richardson’s first and last battle — a battle in which the Excelsior Brigade lost 822 killed, wounded and missing, one third of the entire brigade.