Civil War veteran reburied after genealogists find descendant

YORKVILLE, Ill. -- A historical mystery solved by local genealogists turned into a surprise reunion of sorts for a woman who learned she was the great-great-granddaughter of an exhumed Civil War veteran.

On Thursday, Nancy Adams, her husband and son stood by the rusted cast-iron coffin of Clark Smith -- whose remains were discovered in a long-vanished North Aurora cemetery -- as a final chapter of the mystery played out at Yorkville's Elmwood Cemetery.

Civil War re-enactors joined the ceremonial reinterment, as taps was played and the group sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

The casket containing Smith's remains was to be buried alongside the relatives of Adams, whose family heritage has been enriched by the discovery.

"I am just so grateful that we could get closure on this and that he could be with family," she said.

Smith, a corporal who served in the Battle of Shiloh, the siege of Corinth, Miss., and other Civil War engagements, died in December 1867 and was buried in a farm graveyard in what is now the western Chicago suburb of North Aurora.

But outward evidence of the cemetery eventually vanished, and no clear record of it exists in Kane County documents.

Responding to rumors and local news accounts from past years about the grave site, a prospective buyer of the land brought in a crew from the University of Illinois earlier this year to perform a magnetic scan on the land.

The crew found three potential sites, and archaeologists from the university found Smith's casket over the summer, along with those of 18 others whose coffins lacked items that could be used to identify them.

A professional genealogist who read newspaper accounts of Smith's exhumation called Linda Eder, project committee chairwoman of the Kane County Genealogical Society, and researcher Sandy Chalupa to help trace Smith's family tree.

Eder and Chalupa traced Smith's descendants to Nancy Kenney Adams, 55, of Aurora, and telephoned her last month with the somewhat startling news.

"I had to shut off the stove," Adams said of the call. "I was just so taken aback. We talked for about an hour."

Eder said the discovery was "a big deal to us," too.

"People don't understand how big this is to us," she said. "Our own families don't understand that."

The burial was paid for by the developer of the North Aurora site.

"It's important that he'd be safe forever and that he's with family," Eder said. "That's the way it should be."