The Long Road Home
By KAREN JEFFREY
STAFF WRITER
BOURNE - The air was saturated with the scent of lilacs and the promise of
summer when they joined the army in May 1861 - young men willing to leave
behind loved ones in defense of the
It was a time of flag waving, long-winded oration and gallant gestures; a time
when optimistic young citizen-soldiers and politicians predicted the war could
last only a few months. Little did any of them know that within a matter of
weeks some of them would never see their families again.
Six of those
The remains of the soldiers from the 1st Massachusetts Infantry will be brought
home to their native soil 145 years after their deaths on a
The men have been identified through rigorous research, but because they have
not been positively identified through DNA, all six will be buried as unknowns.
''The fact that they are finally coming home after so many years gives a lot of
satisfaction to us,'' said Massachusetts National Cemetery Director Paul
McFarland. ''They remained in anonymous graves long enough.
''We hope that the public will attend,'' he said of Saturday's memorial
ceremony that will include Civil War re-enactors and members of the modern-day
Massachusetts National Guard. ''The participation of the Guard is a reminder to
all of us that these men, like men and women today, volunteered to serve their
country. We don't want to forget them,'' McFarland said.
While the Civil War lasted from 1861-1865, it has taken 11 years from start to
finish for the remains of these soldiers to make their way home.
That this is happening at all is largely because of the determined efforts of
Dalton Rector, the descendant of a Confederate cavalryman, and Frank Haley, the
descendant of a Union infantryman.
The Dead
Research by Virginia and Massachusetts Civil War buffs and genealogists
indicate the following six men are most likely those whose bodies were
recovered from shallow graves outside
*William A. Smart, Company G., 20, of
*Albert F. Wentworth, 18, Company H, of
*Thomas Roome, 30, of Boston, Company G, working as a
courier at his enlistment on May 23, 1861
*George Bacon, 22, of Chelsea, Company H, working as an oil pressman at his
enlistment on May 22, 1861
*Gordon Forrest, 22, of Malden, Company G, working as a printer at his
enlistment on May 23, 1861
*James Silvey, 23, of Boston, Company G., working as
an upholsterer at his enlistment on May 23, 1861.
Source: courtesy of Frank Haley, a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the
Civil War, and Dalton Rector, a member of the Northern Virginia Relic Hunters
Association.
It began in 1995 when Kevin Ambrose, a member of the Northern Virginia Relic
Hunters Association, was searching for Civil War artifacts in a wooded area
near
As any student of the Civil War knows,
At first, Ambrose thought he had stumbled across a spot rich with relics, but
soon discovered he was searching through a shallow grave. He covered it up and
notified state authorities. Nothing happened with the grave until two years
later when McDonald's Corp. decided to clear the land for construction of a
new, fast-food restaurant. In accordance with
Excavation began under the supervision of
This was just the start of a puzzle that was to consume Rector for the next
several years. A
The scraps of cloth, buttons and a pair of shoes found in the graves did little
to identify who lay there or where they were from. ''That's
because in the early days of the war a lot of the soldiers, North and South,
didn't have uniforms. They came in wearing uniforms from their state
militias,'' said Johnson, the archaeologist. ''The war machinery hadn't cranked
up to produce uniforms; there weren't contracts out for shoes.''
Wood remnants and nails outlining the shape of long-decayed coffins were found
in each grave, but these only proved that someone had time to bury the soldiers
in coffins - a nicety that was to be abandoned later in the war when time was
short and casualties greater. Buttons bearing eagle insignias, a common motif
among state militias, were also found in the graves. While this helped, it did
not narrow the search field very much.
Neither did sophisticated scientific tests that help identify where a person
was raised by isolating and identifying certain isotopes in the remains. In
this case, all scientists could say was that some of these.
If you go
What: Memorial ceremony and burial of six Civil War
soldiers from the 1st Massachusetts Infantry.
Where:
When: Ceremony to begin at
Who: Members of the public are invited to attend free. Civil war re-enactors
and others will participate.
Why: The remains of the soldiers were found in forgotten graves in
long-dead soldiers had eaten corn in childhood. And
this is where Rector's near-obsession came into play. ''All the while we were
excavating the graves, we talked about who were these men, where were they
from?'' he said during a telephone interview from inside an early 19th-century
Rector began a painstaking search of records in the National Archives, looking
for regiments and battalions that may have been in the area. Once identifying
these, he narrowed the search further by tracing the names and fates of
soldiers within those units. He read military reports, letters and spent hours
and hours cross-referencing names.
''It might be hard for anyone who hasn't done something like this to appreciate
how much work
It was only after he painstakingly eliminated the names of hundreds of other
men, accounting for their fates, that Rector concluded the bodies must be from
the 1st Massachusetts Infantry, which lost 24 soldiers in the battle at
Rector is too much of a gentleman to speak about the frustration he encountered
once he finished the research. Others, however, acknowledge Rector encountered
repeated roadblocks when trying to interest people in
This is where Haley, the
Haley spent two years cutting through red tape and staying in touch with
Rector. He arranged for the remains to find a final resting place in Bourne.
''This is the least we can do for those men,'' he said.
© 2006 Cape Cod Times