Today: “The largest group interment of Civil War soldiers to take place in the last 150 years”

ECW’s friend Richard Heisler of Civil War Seattle shares news of extraordinary event taking place later today:

On August 21, 2024, an unprecedented group of 28 Union Civil War veterans and 30 spouses will be honored together in Seattle, Washington, during a public memorial service. The following day, August 22, they will be interred in Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington. This is likely the largest group interment of Civil War soldiers to take place in the last 150 years. (Details are below, including information on livestreams of several related events.)

Why Seattle? Thousands of Civil War veterans made the Seattle area home in the decades after the conflict. The veterans fought for states across the Union but migrated here in the decades following the conflict. Despite the distance from the war’s battlefields, the legacy of those who fought the Civil War is woven into the fabric of Pacific Northwest history. Yet, several of them remained nearly forgotten in area funeral homes for more than 100 years.

They fought in battles like Gettysburg, made the March to the Sea and endured the horrors of Andersonville. Then they played a vital role in building the cities and towns of the Pacific Northwest in the decades after the war. This is an opportunity for us to join together to honor these men and women of the Civil War. They’ll be interred with the recognition and honors that have been denied them for over a century.

The interment of so many Civil War soldiers or veterans together is extraordinary. We may never see something like this happen again.

Why are they being found now? Years of dedicated work by the Missing In America Project identified the cremated remains of these veterans and spouses. The mission of the Missing In America Project is to locate and identify the unclaimed cremated remains of American veterans and secure final resting places for these forgotten heroes. The reasons these veterans were left unclaimed are as varied as the number of veterans. Sometimes surviving family members died or moved away. Some had no local family to pick them up. Others arranged for temporary storage and had final wishes that went unrealized. The practice of cremation was adopted in this region earlier than most of the country. It was possible for veterans from the Civil War generation to have chosen that at a higher rate than elsewhere, thereby setting the conditions for some to have remained unclaimed and forgotten by time.

Veterans of regiments from Indiana, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Wisconsin and the Navy are among those in the group to be honored.

The public memorial ceremony takes place in Seattle, Washington at Dignity Memorial’s Evergreen-Washelli Funeral Home today, August 21, 2024, at 1 p.m. We invite your participation by in-person attendance to join in the tribute.

The Evergreen-Washelli Tribute Center will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will feature an exhibit on Seattle’s Civil War connections and some of the men and women being honored. Visitors are invited to browse the exhibit and spend time viewing the old soldiers’ and spouses’ urns with the floral tributes and messages.

Internment of the cremated remains in Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington is on Thursday, August 22nd at 12:30 p.m.

For additional information on the public memorial service, please contact Nikole Mitchell of Evergreen-Washelli cemetery at Nikole.Mitchell@dignitymemorial.com or visit www.evergreenwashelli.com.

For additional information on the Missing in America Project please contact MIAP Washington State Coordinator Thomas Keating at cobra89@comcast.net, MIAP Washington State Assistant Coordinator Lynn Lake at lynnl.wa.miap@gmail.com or visit www.miap.org.

For additional information on the Civil War veterans in the Seattle area, please contact historian Richard Heisler of Civil War Seattle at civilwarseattle@gmail.com or visit www.civilwarseattle.com.