A Maryland woman is on a mission to tell the stories of Civil War soldiers buried in unmarked graves.
During the Civil War, the historic Methodist Church in Poolesville was a popular church. It became a town hall and now is a thrift shop. Behind it is a cemetery with many unmarked graves.
“I thought, How sad that these men, Civil War vets, soldiers, are buried here with no marking,” said Peggy Erickson, director of Heritage Montgomery, Montgomery County’s historical society.
She had a partial list of names but wanted to know more.
“Not enough honor has been paid to them,” she said.
Heritage Montgomery has made a video about Poolesville in the 1860s. With both Union and Confederate troops maintaining a local presence, battles and skirmishes were constant...
“Poolesville was a small town, 350 people,” Erickson said. “They had 15,000 soldiers here.”
“We were really a very important linchpin in the defense of Washington,” she added.
There are 80 unmarked graves at the cemetery, and 31 are for soldiers who fought in the war.
Erickson has been making phone calls and scouring records online. So far she’s compiled more than a dozen short biographies.
Many were highly educated men from Massachusetts, including some from Harvard Law School who left school to fight.
Artifacts from the war sit down the street in the John Poole General Store and Museum, but Erickson wants to learn more and share the stories with the soldiers' families.
The soldiers may be at rest, but she won’t be at peace until she knows who is buried there and can honor them.
“I don’t have a game plan as to how to do it, but i think it’s certainly something that needs more than a few pieces of old tombstones,” she said.
