Chad Boehlke has worked to get headstones for six Black Civil War veterans’ unmarked graves at East Cemetery.
Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree/Journal-Courier
East Cemetery contains unmarked graves, including six that belong to Black Civil War veterans who moved to Jacksonville after the war.
Morgan County Historical Society member Chad Boehlke has been working to ensure those six graves no longer count among the unmarked, and the final two graves soon will have headstones.
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Boehlke has been working to get headstones for the six graves through a program that provides free headstones for military service members.
“Military personnel are entitled to a free headstone from the government,” Boehlke said. “For whatever reason, these guys didn’t get one.”
The graves for Joseph “Reed” Raymond and Emil “Thomas” Johnson are the final two graves to receive headstones.
Boehlke has already worked to get stones for Nathan Watson, Alexander Harrison, Albert Brown and Edward Terry. Those have already been installed.
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Each man was a member of the Richard Yates Grand Army of the Republic, an all-black veterans organization in Jacksonville. The post was one of 10 all-black veterans organizations in Illinois, Boehlke said.
Many of the members were buried in East Cemetery, though a few were buried elsewhere, including Quincy and Jerseyville. One member Boehlke hasn’t been able to verify.
Several of the graves, including multiple that Boehlke was getting stones for, surround a monument featuring a Civil War-era cannon, dedicated to honoring the Grand Army of the Republic members.
The push to get headstones for the six men began with a different project Boehlke was working on. Boehlke said he had been working on a paper about the organization for the Illinois State Historical Society when he visited the cemetery.
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“I went out to see where these men were buried and I found most of the guys, but not everybody,” he said. “Not everyone received a headstone during their burial. Because of work I’ve done previously, I knew they were entitled to a headstone.”
Boehlke said the reason for the lack of stones isn’t confirmed, but he suspects that it may have been because the post had closed before their deaths, so there was not a veterans organization to get their stones.
When he found that six of the members he’s been able to determine are buried in the cemetery did not have stones, he said he wanted to honor their memory and service by getting them stones.
The process has taken time as he had to help find proof of their service to the country in the military.
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He has found records for all six.
“These last two were he hardest because it took a while to find their records,” Boehlke said.
He said he was able to find some of the information through information on the Grand Army of the Republic records available at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
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Boehlke said he is waiting to find out when the headstones will be installed. Once he has that date, he plans to work with various veterans organizations to have a ceremony to dedicate the stones and honor the veterans.
“I have a few that have expressed interest and we will get something planned once we have some dates figured out,” Boehlke said. “This was something I was happy to do to honor their history.”