Mismanagement of CWVMC Burials and Burial Records

Each burial at the Central Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery (CWVMC) has been assigned a “burial number”, starting with burial #1 – Isaac Baker in June 1888.

The original burial records (pre-1955) have disappeared from the cemetery; discarded by State of Wisconsin employees.

In 1995, a concerted effort by CWVMC staff was made to identify anomalies within the burial numbering system and two distinctly different problems were documented:

1. One set of burial numbers were “missing” – meaning that these numbers had not been assigned to a known burial. The missing burial numbers were:
   

   165	468	724
   183	590	916
   198	591	925
   212	592	1047

   Additionally, I found this missing burial number, which was overlooked in 1995:  684
   

   It should not be lost on the reader that the State of Wisconsin – even in its attempts to correct errors in the CWVMC burial records – can make another error.  In this case, a missing burial number (684) remained missing from the official “missing burial number list”.

   Through exhaustive research, I was able to reconcile those numbers shown in black.  Burial numbers shown in red remain “unexplained”.  One disturbing explanation would be that these burial numbers represent “missing burials” – opportunities for a burial to have been carried out, but was not documented.

2. A second set of burial numbers had to be inserted “between” actual burial numbers to account for burials that had failed to have been assigned a burial number at the time of the burial.  These burial numbers were “inserted” as 1/2 numbers, such as burial #175 1/2. These “post facto” burial numbers were:
   

   175 1/2	632 1/2	2365 1/2
   429 1/2	641 1/2
   458 1/2	642 1/2
   528 1/2	893 1/2

   Of course, the unresolved question about these “inserted” burial numbers is:  Were there other burials at CWVMC that have gone undocumented and the graves unmarked?

An example of a “missing burial number” would be burial #183, which was very likely assigned to Henry WADLEIGH in 1903.  He was buried at CWVMC and a government headstone was installed at his grave.  Subsequently, his remains were disinterred and re-buried next to his wife in Milwaukee.  It is likely the disinterment occurred at the time of her death in 1905.  Wadleigh does not appear on the official CWVMC “Disinterment List”.

An example of a “post facto” burial number would be burial #632 1/2 which was assigned to Gardner VOIGHT, who died in 1915.  He should have been assigned burial #633, but it did not happen, so his burial was “inserted” between #632 and #633.

It should be noted that the CWVMC was “inserting” burial numbers as recently as the 1970s (or later?), when burial #2365 1/2 was assigned to Marie BROZIK, who died in Nov 1969.

The stark mismanagement of burial records – over at least 7 decades – creates a distrust of all CWVMC burial records.  It also explains how two Civil War veterans could be buried at CWVMC – without a burial record and without a marker at either of their graves.

Of the seven (7) “missing burial numbers”, how many represent actual burials – for which no burial record and no headstone exists?