Civil War Gravestone Preservation initiative
The Massachusetts Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission was a state-level entity established by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to "organize sesquicentennial tributes to the Civil War and Massachusetts's role therein". It was established on April 4th, 2011 and ended with the "Returning of the Flags" event on December 22, 2015.
This charity applied for a matching Grant from the Commission. Our proposal was to clean all of the 440+ headstones of the Veterans of the Civil War throughout Middleborough. We were approved. We began focusing exclusively on these stones during the summer of 2015, and our work continued through October 2017. We learned A LOT about how this charity can handle project management thanks to our efforts working on this initiative. We expect to use those skills in the foreseeable future. There are about 400 Veterans of the Civil War buried & remembered throughout 15 cemeteries in Middleborough. Their graves are marked with white marble and granite headstones. Those stones had become covered with mold and lichen. On many stones, the names, historical references, and artwork were obscured. Because we could, we set out to change that. We worked with the Veterans Affairs office of Middleborough for the listing of the Veterans. Because of our time in the cemeteries, we have been able to improve the accuracy of the records held by that office. While in the cemeteries, we found GAR Post 8 medallions. We consulted with the Middleborough Historical Association for the books that listed the GAR medallions unique identifier for the name of the Veteran who the medallion belonged to. These books saved us countless hours or research and helped us correct many examples of "misplaced Valor" in our cemeteries. We worked with the permission and cooperation of the cemetery associations that are stewards of these sacred grounds. The Volunteers of this charity invested 3 years toward this project. We hope that you are pleased with the results. For a listing of the Civil War Veterans in each cemetery, click the buttons on the right. The listings are on Facebook. Please be sure to LIKE the cemetery Page. The numbers refer to the Veterans interred here and remembered here with cenotaphs. The numbers do not refer to the number of stones cleaned by the FoMC. In the future, one complete listing will be in our master database. Please contact us if you can Volunteer for that project. |
