More Than A Dozen Graves Of Civil War Veterans To Get Headstones In Oswego Cemetery
(CBS) -- More than a dozen forgotten graves of Civil War veterans will be getting headstones at a cemetery in Oswego - after a yearlong effort by the Sons of Union Veterans, reports WBBM's Steve Miller.
One of the leaders of the project: Robert Rogers, who is graves registrar for the Philip H. Sheridan Camp Number 2, Sons of Union Veterans, based in the western suburbs.
"It's incumbent upon us... to do what we can to honor these men," he said.
Thanks to Rogers and his group, the VA is providing headstones for unmarked graves and new headstones for graves that are damaged.
A man named James Cliggitt, one of three brothers who went to fight, was buried in an unmarked grave.
"James came back and the other two didn't," said Oswego historian Stephenie Todd. "Philip is the one that died on the hospital ship of dysentery, and Michael starved to death at Andersonville. That of course is a Confederate prison."
Another one of the veterans getting a headstone next month is Robert R. Smith.
"He enlisted in United States Colored Troops, Company E of the 66th," said Todd. "And that was kind of a controversial thing at the time - having African Americans fight, but he did, and he came back here to Oswego and settled down.
Todd says Smith had about nine children and several died when they were babies. She says one of Smith's great-grandsons is a federal judge in Minneapolis and another is a doctor with the VA in Bethesda, Maryland.
The new markers for the so-called forgotten veterans will be dedicated May 7.