Civil War vets' markers renewed

On Veteran's Day, a ceremony at St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands unveiled the restored headstone of a Civil War veteran, the first of many to come.

Assemblyman John McEneny, a local historian; Colonel Kevin Moore, U.S. Army Commander of the Watervliet Arsenal; Deacon Robert Herzog, principal of LaSalle Institute in Troy; and Richard Touchette, director of the Albany Diocesan Cemeteries Office, took part along with the color guard from LaSalle.

Colonel Moore unveiled the headstone, and Deacon Herzog blessed it during a prayer ceremony.

Research

According to Mr. Touchette, the restoration of Pvt. Thomas Smullen's headstone was the first in a process that will lead to restoring all the headstones of Civil War veterans interred in the cemetery.

"There are over 250 headstones marking the graves of these soldiers," he said. "I can see Smullen's headstone from my office. We had to do a rubbing to decipher the inscription; the letters and date were worn away."

The rubbing helped him glean vital information about the deceased.

"A search of New York State Militia records revealed that Pvt. Smullen was 23 years old when he enlisted at Albany," Mr. Touchette said. "He served for three years as a private, mustering in Company A, 192 N.Y. Volunteers, on April 3, 1865, and mustering out on August 28, 1865, at Cumberland, Maryland. Cemetery records show that he was born in Ireland and died in the County Hospital in Albany on April 26, 1887 at the age of 45."

New marker

With the information he obtained from the rubbing and online research, Mr. Touchette was able to complete the records of the soldier's life and death.

"We then applied for a replacement headstone from the Veterans Administration," he noted.

The new grave marker is situated next to the original stone.

More to come

Mr. Touchette said, "We have started the St. Agnes Cemetery Civil War Project, which is expected to take from 12 to 18 months to complete.

"We want to go through the cemetery to locate the rest of these stones before they're completely unreadable. Many of the original marble headstones have been ravaged by time and weather, and are now nearly illegible.

"We want to preserve what's already there, catalogue and research the history so we have a complete record of each veteran, and then order replacement headstones."

Service effort

Recently, a group of Confirmation candidates visited the cemetery, spending a day cataloguing and counting some of the sites.

"They're using this as a service project," Mr. Touchette said. "It also gives them a sense of the history of our area. We are looking for individuals, volunteer groups, veterans groups and youth groups to help us in this project."

Mr. Touchette's own interest in the Civil War began as a boy in Missouri.

"When I was a Boy Scout, we visited the battlefield at Shiloh [in Tennessee]. I was fascinated by all of that," he said. "I also lived close to Springfield, Illinois, the home of Abraham Lincoln. The Civil War has always interested me. I guess this is an extension of that."

(11/15/07) [[In-content Ad]]