3 Union Remains To Be Buried In Petersburg on Memorial Day
May 2003

PETERSBURG, Va. - In a ceremony that will echo poignantly with present-day battle casualties, the remains of three Union soldiers will be laid to rest on Memorial Day at Petersburg National Battlefield, 140 years after they died for their country.

The ceremony, open to the public, will be held at 11 a.m. Monday, May 26, at the park's Poplar Grove National Cemetery. The public is asked to be ready at 10 a.m. to board shuttle buses to the cemetery, since no parking will be available on site. The shuttle will run from Richard Bland College, off Flank Road, about two miles from Poplar Grove.

Park superintendent Bob Kirby noted the rarity of the occasion.

"How many burials of Civil War soldiers do we have nowadays?" he said. The event also resonates with the casualties of the Iraq war, he said. "There's a long tradition of honoring those who have fought - the solemnity and sacredness of fallen soldiers."

The highlight of the burial ceremony will be participation by the 3rd U.S. Infantry, the "Old Guard," from Fort Myer, outside the nation's capital. Kirby said two sets of soldiers - a dozen men each including color guard, bugler and casket bearers - will handle the
two caskets with the remains.

Actually, the bones of three men are included, but one soldier is represented by only an arm bone. Relic hunters dug up the remains. According to a forensic report by Douglas Owsley of the National History Museum at the Smithsonian, around 1985 the partial skeleton of a soldier was found at Reams Station along with his U.S. belt buckle, eagle uniform buttons, suspender buckles, iron pant buttons, and a "small, .36-caliber Confederate pistol bullet, which probably killed him."

In his report, Owsley conjectured that "The soldier had been buried in a shallow grave. This was apparently a field burial, as the body was found along the side of a period road from which the Union army had retreated. Since the Federal army fled the site, Confederate
soldiers were responsible for burying the dead."

Owsley determined that the soldier was of European ancestry and was 25 to 29 years old. The bones also showed signs of "shovel bites," indicating that the remains were "disinterred in a hasty, nonprofessional manner," Owsley wrote. He concluded that the soldier was killed in the battle of Reams Station, Aug. 25, 1864.

The other set of remains was apparently associated with one of several fights, Owsley said: the battle of Peeble's Farm, Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, 1864; a picket line attack the following March 25; or the attack by the Union Sixth Corps April 2, 1865.

Artifacts retrieved included four eagle coat buttons - the correct number for a fatigue coat - "and a .58-caliber bullet that possibly killed him." Owsley said the soldier was Caucasian, 21 to 24 years old, and had been struck in the head, possibly by the bullet found with the remains.

Among the speakers at the burial will be Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), and Maj. Gen. Terry Juskowiak, commander of nearby Fort Lee. Kirby said the ceremony will be "solemn" and "pretty short and to the point."

The remains were left at the park before Kirby's arrival as superintendent in December 2000. "I was pretty shocked" to discover them, he said. "They should not sit on a shelf in anybody's archival storage facility one moment longer."

Since digging up human remains is a felony, Kirby said the park was obliged to contact the state attorney general, and undertook a "pretty rigorous process" to determine when the individuals died and whether they were Native American.