In the wake of my work at the Central Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery, I decided to take on the much larger state veterans cemetery in Union Grove: Southern Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery (SWVMC).
Over two visits in the summer of 2018, I photographed every veteran’s headstone in the cemetery.
I then reviewed these photographs to identify prima facie, or, “obvious” inscription errors – both of omission and commission. I did NOT research every headstone, which, I am sure, would have identified many more errors.
At the CWVMC, I created a database of over 6,500 burials. At the SWVMC, I have created a database for only those burials with an inscription error. I am currently researching these errors – almost 800 of them (this number will likely go down, but not significantly).
I did not have access to SWVMC burial records (I did at CWVMC), so I did not expect to find burial anomalies at SWVMC. Purely by chance, nevertheless, I have found some burial anomalies. The difference between the two cemeteries is that many of the CWVMC anomalies were a result of the 130 years of record-keeping; but, the SWVMC has been in operation a little over 20 years.
I had planned to publish this work on Memorial Day (then the 4th of July), but the research requests from NPRC are taking much longer than expected. New planned publishing date: 11 Nov 2019.