The GAR Home was opened in 1887 and the first member’s to die at the Home was Isaac Baker on 17 Jun 1888. He was buried in the “GAR Home Cemetery”, which must have been planned in advance of his death. The cemetery is now known as the Central Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery (CWVMC).
I started visiting CWVMC in 2009 while participating as a volunteer photographer with FindaGrave. While taking photos of headstones and researching them afteward, I began to notice that a group of burials at CWVMC were consistently undocumented on FindaGrave and also not listed on the de facto official burial list found on the VA’s Nationwide Gravesite Locator.
Primarily, this group was made up of wives and widows of Civil War veterans. I began this project to find and document every burial in CWVMC of a Civil War wife or widow.
Eventually, I decided to include all Civil War era burials. Then I decided to document every burial at CWVMC. I recorded and photographed every headstone in the cemetery up to the end of 2013; almost 6,500 burials. I researched all of the Civil War era burials and many of the later burials – to confirm birth, death, and military information.
I documented my findings in three volumes:
The Muffled Drum (Civil War)
The Ghostly Bugles (Indian Wars thru WWI)
The Third Volley (WWII thru 2013)
As a concurrent project, I documented every headstone inscription error: missing war service, missing units, missing ranks, incorrect ranks, incorrect birth dates and death dates, and missing decorations for valor and combat service.
Additionally, I identified an embarrassing number of burial anomalies:
- One (1) Civil War veteran is buried in a grave on which another man’s headstone was installed
- One (1) Civil War veteran’s grave location was never marked with a veteran’s headstone and the location of his grave is unknown to this day
- Two (2) graves are each marked with a headstone with only the inscription “UNKNOWN” – potentially two more veterans buried in an unrecorded grave
- Two (2) headstones were installed for Civil War veterans who were never buried at CWVMC
- Four (4) headstones were installed for “non persons” (people who never existed) at CWVMC
- Seventeen (17) sets of married couples appear to have been buried “separately” – meaning they were not buried next to each other
- In addition to the 17 “separate” burials, twelve (12) more couples had an “interloping” burial made between their previously adjoining graves
- Five (5) civilians, who are ostensibly ineligible to be buried at CWVMC, were nevertheless buried there
- Seven (7) burial records show a different burial location from the apparent “actual” burial location – based on the physical location of the headstone
All of the headstone inscriptions and burial anomalies were documented in:
Vandalism of Neglect – Revised Edition
The original edition was sent to the Wisconsin Secretary of Veterans Affairs in May 2017, with recommendations to address these problems. The Secretary – and no member of his agency – has ever contacted me about my findings.
The WIDVA response appears to be: they are interested in fixing “some” inscription errors, which occurred in the past 6-8 years; but they are not interested in fixing any error (of any kind, burial, inscription, etc) that occurred prior to that time frame.
My take on it: They want to fix egregious errors for which they may be personably responsible, and are willing to ignore earlier errors, no matter how egregious.