Civil War Event, Aug. 8th TRG Article

For more than a hundred years, in some cases, men from Greenwood who once defended the Union in the vicious Civil War have lain in their final resting places in a scenic cemetery near the Black River. If ever their graves were marked to recognize them for their service, no evidence of it remains.

The Greenwood American Legion Wallis Hinker Post #238 will be fixing that on Aug. 8, 2009, some 143 years after the musket fire of the Civil War finally ended. On that day, the local Legion Post will fulfill part of its stated mission to ensure that no veteran ever be forgotten or rest unidentified by placing markers at each of more than 40 graves. The day’s events will include military rites by the Greenwood Legion Post and Co. B. 2^nd Wisconsin Civil War Re-enactors, an address by a noted Wisconsin Civil War historian, and sale of special commemorative books at a reduced price.

According to Dick Adler, even chairman and finance officer of the Greenwood Legion Post, the day’s activities have been in the planning stages for more than three years. In 2006, the Legion place a government marker for Civil War veteran Curtis Markham, and that kicked of a string of events leading to the Aug. 8 commemoration.

Shortly after the Markham ceremony Stan and Jan Schwarze, former area residents who now live in Minnesota and run the Clark County Internet History Buffs organization, gave Adler a list of more than 30 more local Civil War veterans’ burial records. After checking the records against actual headstones and markers in the Greenwood City Cemetery, Adler said the Legion decided something needed to be done to properly mark their resting places.

“We checked those out and most of them didn’t have a marker,” Adler said. “We decided to take that on.”

For Adler, already a Civil War history buff himself, the project has a personal interest as one of the unmarked graves, that of Christian Wollenberg, belongs to his wife’s great-grandfather. The other Civil War veterans to be recognized must have family members somewhere, too, Adler said, and a focus of the Aug. 8 events is to get those families to Greenwood to participate.

Adler said all of the veterans to be honored were men who died not on the great battlefields of the war between Confederate and Union soldiers, but back home, after the fighting. They were men, he said, who contributed to the birth and growth of the city of Greenwood, and who spent their final days there.

“These guys all came back. They all live here,” he said.

Some information about their lives has been researched and collected in a book entitled “Civil War Soldiers in the Heart of Clark Co., Wisconsin.” It contains biographies and photographs of the local Civil War veterans, as well as some history of the war and related topics. It is available for purchase for $12.50 at the Greenwood City Hall or the Public Library, or by contacting Janet Schwarze at 210 Harvest Ave. NW, Rochester, MN, 55901. It will also be sold on Aug. 8 for a special price of $10. Proceeds from the books sales will help offset the Legion’s costs of buying grave markers.

Adler said the 120-page book is the perfect complement for the Aug. 8 event, as it brings to life the men whom the Legion is honoring these many years after their lives and deaths. Their stories of a life in the nation’s bloodiest war and their struggles upon returning home are captivating, Adler said.

“It’s been really fun to read about these guys,” he said, “the difficulties they had in those early years.”

Adler said the project has also turned up some surprises, such as the discovery of the unmarked grave of William Harrison “Harry” Mead, a Greenwood pioneer and one of the Civil War veterans to be recognized.

The town of Mead now bears the name of the man who is known to have moved to the area by wagon in 1865 with his wife, Julia, and two small children. They settled on a homestead in what is now the town of Warner, and eventually owned more than 2,000 acres of land. After his death, he was mostly forgotten by local history and his burial site was unknown, until the Legion discovered it while searching the graves of Civil War veterans.