BRONZE PLAQUES MARK WHERE HEROES REST

The memory of local heroes who fought for the Union army during the Civil War will not be lost for future generations.

The Cape Girardeau chapter of the Richard J. Oglesby Camp 61 Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War is seeing to it that the graves of the Union soldiers buried in Old Lorimer Cemetery have bronze plaques placed in their honor.

There are about 200 soldiers buried in the cemetery, but over time the gravestones have worn out.

"Over the years, the weather, the rain, hale and sleet -- these things just chip away the stones," said Zac Caldwell, the Cape Girardeau Camp 61 commander. "There are several that we can't even read.

Caldwell said the organization has checked cemetery records to get information on the soldiers buried there. In some cases the information is incomplete.

"There are some soldiers buried there that don't have stones," Caldwell said. "There are records, but there is nothing there today."

The plaques are going next to each grave site. The federal government makes the bronze plaques free of charge because the soldiers are veterans, and the city has agreed to install the plaques for the organization.

"It is only a minor cost," said Dan Muser, director of Cape Girardeau Parks and Recreation. "We basically are just setting them in some concrete. We thought it would be easier for us to do it rather than have them do it themselves."

The plaques contain all of the information that is available about the person buried, which is not extensive.

"There are no birth dates and no death dates," Caldwell said. "All we know about them is their unit and who they fought for."

There is one woman buried there. Julia Gill was a nurse for the Union Army, but that is all the information her grave site provides.

So far, about 100 plaques have been made. Caldwell has completed the research for the southern half of the cemetery, which is the Roman Catholic half. All of the soldiers in that area are Roman Catholic. The Department of Parks and Recreation is putting them in a few at a time.

Caldwell said Aug. 15, his organization is going to do a walk-through of the northern half, the Protestant section, and locate more graves and compare them to the cemetery records. Once he has the next set of names, he can order the plaques.

The whole project should be complete by next spring. The organization plans to have a dedication ceremony once it is complete. Then it will be time for a new cemetery.

"There are more cemeteries in Cape Girardeau with stones similar to this," Caldwell said. "It is too bad the old stones don't hold up too long."

Caldwell said he could have ordered new stones instead of the plaques. But in most cases the stones were not broken, just unreadable. In order to preserve the history, he decided plaques would be best.

"This is what we are shooting for -- the aesthetics," Caldwell said. "The old stones give you a sense of history and the 1860s when they were made."