Symbols, and stories, of sacrifice, today

When I prowl old cemeteries, I'm always surprised by the untold stories I find there, especially at the veterans' graves,  here in Edmond, and elsewhere. On this Memorial Day, think about the flags decorating their graves of American veterans throughout this country.  

So it was this year two weeks ago when I drove up to my Dad's grave in the oldest part of Fairlawn Cemetery at Comanche, Oklahoma, and saw something I'd never seen before, though I make the trip every year to plant flowers.
Several graves were decorated with small Confederate flags, but not the polluted one waved by the redneck racists of today.
It was the final national flag of the Confederacy, the "blood stained banner," featuring the square battle flag in the canton corner, white, and a red stripe at end. This was the flag adopted during the last two years of the Civil War. 

Union vet's grave in Oakwood, Edmond

If it hadn't been for the flag, I would never have discovered this grave. Unlike most Union veterans graves  which are easy to spot with their uniform shape, Confederate graves are random, and rarely decorated.
I've written before about the Union graves at Oakwood Cemetery in Edmond at the end of 15th Street just before Lake Arcadia, where many veterans are buried, including Civil War vets who came to Indian Territory to settle: Memorial Day flags at Oakwood
I walked over to the one nearest my dad's grave. There was a simple gravestone, with a single phrase under the person's name and dates: "Confederate soldier." He died in 1903. I've often wondered about those Southerners who survived the war, what they felt having been defeated, how they adapted, what stories they told. 
Someone had done a lot of genealogy research. As I walked around the cemetery to each of the flags I saw, most of them did not mention them as veterans. Two more did however, and these listed their Army units, which made it easier to find information on their service, thanks to the Internet.
Such it is with Union veterans, if their graves list their state and military units.
Memorial Day, first called Decoration Day, was founded in 1868 by General James Garfield to honor the Union soldiers who died in the war. After WWI, the name became Memorial Day to honor American veterans of all wars.
Although Southerners tried to establish a similar day, the dates vary from state to state, and decorating those graves is haphazard, which made my visit to Comanche more interesting.
The two other Confederate graves with identification were a solder from Tennessee and one from Texas. I looked up their combat records. More stories.

Jesse K. McMasters, Pvt., Tennessee Infantry. He was fortunate to survive the brutal war. Out of 850 men enlisted in 1861, he was probably captured at Fort Donaldson with 528. Later exchanged, he fought at Chickamauga where the regiment lost 46 percent of 361 soldiers in 1863. In December, 1864 he must have been one of only 12 mustering. Final surrender was April 26, 1865. When did he come to Indian Territory, and how? 

George W. Lewis, Capt. 20th Texas infantry. He lived to almost 100, and his volunteer unit saw little action except in the battle of Galveston in 1863, and  one of the last to surrender, May 26, 1865 at New Orleans. 
It was composed mainly of middle-aged men, and charged with protecting Galveston and the Sabine River. 

Again, I don't know when he came to Indian Territory, but like my grandparents and great grandparents buried nearby, he probably forded the Red River in a wagon into what was commonly referred to as "The Nation." (Indian Nation). Here is the flag his unit carried, an adaptation of the original national flag, the real "Stars and Bars."

The Oakwood Cemetery is a well cared for territorial cemetery with active participants, of several families. I drove out there this weekend and they had a Memorial Day service. 
Earlier I'd taken a photo of this veterans grave, and there's a story there too, with descendants, I'm assuming, replacing the original gravestone.
J.J. Henager, 39th Iowa Infantry. No dates, but obviously family cares. His unit had 1064 men at one time or another, with six officers and 58 enlisted men killed, and two officers and 134 men dying from disease. The unit was part of Sherman's march to the sea, and after the war, took part in the Grand Review march in Washington. How did he get here? 
Remember these Americans today, and the terrible cost of war. Two more photos to make that point, and the reason for today. One of unknown Union soldiers' graves at the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, and another of the Soldiers Rest, Confederate cemetery at Vicksburg, where many are also unknown.

Postscript 1. If the Civil War veteran's grave lists Tennessee, Missouri or Arkansas as home, you have to double check, because solders from these states fought on both sides.
Postscript 2. The reason the Confederate battle flag was adopted was because the Stars and Bars was so similar to the Stars and Stripes, confusion resulted in battle at a distance. Many Southerners didn't like the Stars and Bars anyway because it hinted at strong central government which they opposed. After the war the battle flag became a symbol of racism, thanks to the Klu Klux Klan, which continues, justifiable so, to this day.

Memorial Day discoveries and stories--III

An unexpected veteran's grave

A flash of red, white and blue caught my eye in the cemetery in Waurika, Oklahoma, on Mothers Day,  raising my curiosity.
Every year I drive to the windswept hill and plant real flowers on my Mother's grave. Then after talking with her, I wander among the graves, recognizing the names of many people I knew when we owned the Waurika News-Democrat from 1974 to 1986. It's a bit of time travel for me, spurring memories, and a sense of mortality that increases every year.
This year, as I was driving back through part of the cemetery, I saw this singular flag on a gravestone, stopped and walked over to it, wondering, asking questions.
I'd never heard of Harvey N. McMurtry who died in 1924, and I'm used to finding Civil War vets' graves in rural cemeteries in Oklahoma, but was a surprise. 
It's pretty easy these days to search for Union Civil War veterans' histories when you know what unit they served in, as with Reese Hildreth in the Oakwood Cemetery I wrote about earlier today. 
I managed to find material on the Second Texas Cavalry thanks to Texas records, but no mention of his name or the roster. The officers are listed, but not the enlisted men. I did find an Ancestry.com link for a Harvey Newton McMurtry, born 1838 which I bet is him, with unknown death date and names of his parents. Nothing else. Stories. Questions.
As a Southerner, I have often wondered what it had been like to have survived that war, to have lost, and then lived for years afterward. He lived a long time after The War and for someone born in the 1830s. 
Here is someone who may actually have been born in The Republic of Texas, then became a citizen of the United States in 1845, and then a citizen of the Confederate States of America. 
So many questions.  Most of all, what were his emotions and stories, through the years? How did he feel, cope, adapt, to having been defeated?Did he regain his U.S. citizenship? How did he end up in Oklahoma? What did he do for a living? What about family? Had he owned slaves? Who decorates his grave? Is he in anyway related to the families of the writer Larry McMurtry of Archer City, Texas, which isn't that far away?
I did find out that Confederate Memorial Day is in late April, commemorating the surrender of the last troops. So perhaps that flag was placed then, and was still there early in May. 
I am aware that that flag is politically incorrect these days, and I resent that racist and hate groups have turned it into a symbol of their demented minds. Sgt. McMurtry deserved better than that. (By the way, that is not the Stars and Bars, the national flag of the Confederacy. It is the battle flag, but no matter.) 
But on this Memorial Day, this veteran also deserves a flag on his grave.
Sgt. McMurtry was well traveled. The rest of this, in his honor, is from the fascinating story of his unit, copyright material from The Texas State Historical Association, by Brett J. Derbes, 2011.

The Second Texas Cavalry was  organized in May 1861 as the Second Texas Mounted Rifles,   reorganized in April 1862 with the same officers and enlisted men. 

It originally consisted of 1,200 men from 18 counties, mostly in East Texas.  It always served west of the Mississippi and briefly  attached to Sibley's army that invaded New Mexico. It  served in Galveston and Houston and then Western Louisiana before returning to Texas in 1863. 

By late 1862  it consisted of 752 men, and by mid-1864 it had only 167.  In March 1865 the regiment consisted of 150 men who served at San Antonio.

Sgt. McMurtry and his comrades fought in many places in Texas, New Mexico (including the defeat in Glorieta Pass outside of Santa Fe),  and Louisiana. They were "dismounted" in March 1865 and gradually disbanded in May as many of  the men fled across the Rio Grande into Mexico. The unit officially surrendered at Galveston on June 2, 1865, almost two months after Lee at Appomattox.

Memorial Day stories and discoveries-II

Santa Fe National Cemetery

Untold stories on Memorial Day in Santa Fe National Cemetery--Pvt. O'Leary

At Santa Fe

Cemeteries draw my attention, like magnets, because they prompt curiosity and imagination as well as a sense of mortality. And national cemeteries bring humility and admiration, especially for me at Santa Fe where we buried my favorite uncle, Michael Henry Clark almost eight years ago.
Mike, a long-time resident of Santa Fe, world traveler and U.S. Navy combat veteran of both WWII and Korea, had rescued me during a dark period of my life, and as the  years passed, I was able to care for him also. Visiting him was always an adventure in story telling of family, of travel, and living.
He lived within sight of the cemetery where he's now buried, and I often visited the cemetery looking at the names on the grave stones. He mentioned one of a  soldier that is a particular source of wonder and untold stories waiting to be discovered.
I've written about Mike and this cemetery many times. So this is abbreviated, for today, in memory, with a salute.
I've photographed it many times, in good weather and in snow. I come away asking myself, "I wonder, I wonder." There are often fresh flowers on this grave. I'll leave you to wonder also.
Next--An unexpected veteran's grave in Waurika.
Earlier--(Or just type "Cemeteries" in the search box for more posts):
https://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-soldiers-rest-memorial-day-and-rose.html
https://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2015/05/p-rowling-cemeteries-on-backroads-i.html

Memorial Day discoveries and stories-I

Prologue

A Civil War veteran's grave at Oakwood

A month of stories have built up since the last post on this blog, and while I've not had "writer's block," I've been almost repelled from sitting down to blog.
Art and life have helped push me away, not ignoring, but delaying so many of the stories I've encountered this month. And blogging takes time, time I've not been willing to spend.
This one comes from duty...duty to keep this blog still somewhat alive, but mainly, duty on Memorial Day, to the American veterans whose graves are decorated with American flags today across the nation and world.
It's also prompted by coincidences, continual curiosity, and sentimentality, including a discovery on Mothers' Day in the Waurika, Oklahoma, cemetery. I also think often  of the several Civil War and other veterans' graves only about six miles from here in the pioneer Oakwood Cemetery on the edge of Lake Arcadia, where families are still burying loved ones. It's one of my meditation places, and prompts the imagination with so many stories and discoveries.
I was also prompted this week by a favorite former student, Emily Bullard Lang, of Price Lang Consulting who mockingly challenged me when I told her I just couldn't seem to sit down and write.
Having recently completed a news release writing refresher course for she and Charlie Price's employees, she smirkingly threw my own words back at me that I'd used for them: "This is a story about...and it's interesting because...." Just fill in the blanks and start writing.
Then my wife Susan prodded me to just sit down and write, especially about Sgt. McMurtry, CSA.
So many discoveries and stories. Next--Santa Fe National Cemetery.

Independence Day challenge--watercolor

Independence Day,  5 by 7 watercolor, 300 Lb. d'Arches

"Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees," Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson's last words, 1863.

Those words come to mind as I seek out veterans' graves in rural cemeteries, attracted by the signature tombstones.
Today was day 4 of the #WorldWatercolorMonth.com challenge, and it led me to Oakwood Cemetery, an 1892 chartered Territorial cemetery on 15th street a few miles east of our house, just before you get to Arcadia Lake.
I've been there many times--a peaceful, thoughtful place, well cared for, and still "active" with its own association and families still burying loved ones there.

What brought me this time was Independence Day, hunting a watercolor subject. I knew there would be flags on veterans graves, and there were. Veterans from the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam are buried there., and I walked to all of them, thinking about the stories, the lives.

Then I found the grave of Marion M. Lowder, a private in the 80th Infantry, 15th Army Division, who died Aug. 4, 1919, just a few months after the end of the war. How did he die? I don't know, but so young and so soon after WWI I' wonder if was from combat injuries.
His parents, born in the 1850s,  must have been homesteaders. I noticed his mother died before him, his father 20 years later, as well as two brothers, all together in a family plot.
Behind his grave is a huge tree, with another veteran's  grave near by, and I thought of Jackson's words.

The Lowder family plot, my watercolor stool in the corner left.

So I set up my stool and tried to paint, after visiting with two folks who stopped by, telling me more stories about the cemetery. But in the morning sun, watercolor is difficult, and I got a little study in before giving up, and coming home and painting this.

Independence isn't free.

"Killed in Action"--Memorial Day amid the Oklahoma graves

Memorial Day, Decoration Day. There will be flags on the graves of veterans all over the U.S. and the world this weekend, trying to remind us that it's not just a three-day weekend.
I am always attracted throughout the year to rural cemeteries, and to National Cemeteries. So many stories, so many lives. 
You don't have to go far, to see graves of men who died for their country, the original reason Memorial Day was established.
In a small cemetery very few miles from our house, the Luther cemetery, just north of US 66, I've wandered many times. This past fall, I discovered two fascinating graves I hadn't seen before. It wasn't a holiday, but there were flags on many veterans graves, and Old Glory flew on a monument overlook others.

The most striking was  that of Ferrell E. Messer, who died  in Vietnam at age 19 in 1969--just five years younger than I--unable to vote, but eligible to die for his country. The grave is topped with half an infantry helmet and a cross  telling freedom's story. I wonder about his heart-broken parents and family, and survivors. 
His grave is not alone in those who died in combat. 
Underneath the cemetery flag is a monument to the servicemen, and one of the sides honors William M. Perkins, 24 years old, of the Rainbow Division, who died 98 years ago in 1918 in France in WWI. (The St. Mihiel battle was in September, two months before the end of the war.)
Do yourself a favor and go walk through a cemetery this weekend. See out the graves with flags on them. It's a Memorial...not a holiday.

Prowling rural cemeteries

Prowling cemeteries on the backroads, I find all kinds of stories that should have been told. 
You can tell the years when a flu or other epidemic hit by the common death dates. You can find how hard life was for early settlers by the large number of infant graves. You can discover segregated graveyards, across the road from each other, and determine races by the poverty or richness of the gravestones. You can find the immigrants graves by their ethnic names. 
On my drives through the country, away from suburban traffic and noise, I've found five rural graveyards within less than 30 minutes of Edmond. I'm sure there are more.

I always stop and walk through them, drawn to the veterans' graves, impressed that after many years, even in neglect, some relatives still decorate them. On this Memorial Day weekend, they bear silent witness to service, and love.

Decorations and stories amid the gravestones

Santa Fe National Cemetery, the Sandias in the distance

Today there will be American flags on thousands of veterans graves in America and around the world.

Santa FE Cemetery

Cemeteries beckon me inside their gates, especially National Cemeteries and small rural ones. When I'm traveling backroads and see one, I invariably stop, get out and wander through them, reading the names, the dates, wondering about the stories. I don't think I'm morbid, though as I get older I'm more aware of mortality, but that's not why I'm so fascinated.  They are emotional experiences that prompt my imagination, curiosity and wonder.
And on this Memorial Day, originally Decoration Day, I'm more aware. I've visited six national cemeteries--Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Fort Smith, Arlington, Punchbowl in Hawaii, and Santa Fe. On my bucket list is Normandy, on D-Day. I hope next year. I've also visited Confederate cemeteries at Manassas and Vicksburg. As a Southerner, I'm in awe at all of them.
I'll admit a special fondness for Santa Fe, where we buried my late favorite uncle, Michael Henry Clark, almost four years ago. Wish I was there to put a flag on his grave.

Unusual grave of a Spanish American war vet at Santa Fe.

Unfortunately, I can't find my photos of Gettysburg, or even Vicksburg, but they remain vivid in my mind. The past is not dead in those places, but talks to you.. 
As I travel the backroads just around here, I've come across many graves of veterans, of black and white  Americans who served their country in many wars, including scattered graves of Confederate veterans. These add to my sense of stories lost and untold.

So here are photos. Listen and you can imagine taps being played, caressing each grave. Next, the private cemeteries.

Arlington

 

Manassas

ConfderateVeterans Rest, Vicksburg, where only 1,600 of 5000 graves are known

Union unknown at Gettysburg National Cemetery

Santa Fe

And here are the concluding lines of "Thanatopsis," by William Cullen Bryant, that I memorized in high school long ago. Seems fitting. Salute those flags today.

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join   

The innumerable caravan, which moves   

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take   

His chamber in the silent halls of death,   

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,   

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed   

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,   

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch   

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

Stories of a Memorial Day flag on his grave

He was 16 years old when he enlisted in the 27th Missouri Infantry at St. Louis in 1862. Today, there's an American flag on his tombstone in Edmond, Indian Territory, where he died in 1894 at age 48. 
His unit was part of the Army of the Tennessee, and took part in the siege of Vicksburg, the battle of Atlanta, and much more in the Civil War. I think, based on a conversation today, he may have been an amputee and that helped lead to a short life.
I've found out Rees Hildreth was born in Iowa, and after the war, married in Missouri, and he and his wife Rachel had 11 children. I'm assuming he took part in the 1889 Land Run for free land. I know he received a military  pension. Some of that  comes from quick searches on the Internet. 

Hildreth's grave just inside the gate

Rees Hildreth

He's buried in the private Oakwood Cemetery about five miles straight east of our house on 15th street just before it ends in what is now Lake Arcadia. I went out there today searching for photos for Memorial Day, and found them, and more. I saw  Tim Martin, near the edge of the cemetery, working on a fresh grave near the corner of the cemetery. It was his recently departed father's, and there was an American flag in place. His father was in the Air Force in Korea. 

And I learned some of the story of the little two-acre cemetery, set aside by  Samuel Myers in 1892, part of his 80-acre allotment from the 1889 Land Run. He was also a Civil War vet, from Illinois.

The story of the cemetery is posted on what we'd call a kiosk today, along with the original charter from Oklahoma Territory. There are four main blocks of grave plots, allowing for six graves per plot. 
The cemetery association met this morning under a tree, conducting business. The only people who can be buried in the cemetery are descendants of the original participants. Martin told me about one of the early graves belonging to a Civil War amputee. A huge number of graves are infant graves, and I've written about that before, last year. It was a Hard Life in Oklahoma Territory.

The cemetery founder's grave

Today I was interested in the veterans' graves, and there are more than 20 of them, judging from the flags out today, three of them including Hildreth's for Civil War vets, and moving up through recent times.
I found Myers' grave, a concrete one from his death at age 90 in 1935, when the Edmond newspaper listed him as one of the last Civil war vets in the area. The cemetery has other stories to tell. When originally chartered, it had a section reserved for "colored" people, remarkable then. More remarkable is that in 1951 it was desegregated, far ahead of its time. 
So many stories, and flags.

Old graves

And new

Flags for the graves, please

Final port of call, Santa Fe National Cemetery

Santa Fe

I can't be in Santa Fe to place an American flag on the grave of my uncle Mike  in the national cemetery this Memorial Day. 
But if memory serves me right, from visiting Vicksburg National Cemetery a few years ago, and at Gettysburg, flags decorate every veterans grave...the original decoration day. 
But there are also probably tens of thousands of private cemeteries around the country where veterans are buried, and some hardy, dedicated souls will give of their own time and money to honor those vets with a flag, but not all. 
That's also true of Confederate cemeteries, and graves of Confederate veterans scattered across the country, including here in Oklahoma,  one only a couple of miles from my house. 
snap a salute, and remember them this Memorial Day weekend.

Confederate grave at Johnsonville, OK

Veterans graves at Santa Fe National Cemetery

"Blue collar roads" Journal--Part II

Highway 60/64 west of Tonkawa may be red on our state map, but it is a blue collar highway these days, a testament to two Oklahomas--the urban affluent, and rural poverty. It is one of William Least Heat Moon's "blue highways" for me.
People who live in booming metro areas in medieval-thought gated communities or stuck like ants in rush hour traffic have no idea of the poverty in most of rural Oklahoma, and a trip down roads like this makes it clear.

Veterans' Memorial at Lamont
water tower and grain elevator in distance

I love roads like this, even though today there is increased oil-field truck traffic. There is some road construction on bridges, and wide open spaces, sparsely populated with cattle, old houses, vacant brick silos, barren fields and dwindling small towns, marked with water towers and grain elevators where railroads used to be.
First settled in the 1890s, and home to booming populations, the small towns every 10 miles are testaments to long gone prosperity and hope. Today, the highest paid people in town are probably school teachers--other than a few bank owners, probate lawyers, and retired large landowners. Everyone else is working in a garage, driving a truck, serving coffee at a cafe or cashiering at a convenience store, serving as a flagman on a road crew, all trying to make a living. You see this in the multitude of old frame houses and mobile homes, with a few brick homes interspersed.

There are two Oklahomas

There's usually a bank and a post office. Source of pride in every town, the last thing really holding it together, is the school, even if it is consolidated with another town.
At Lamont, population 417, 12 miles east of I-35, there's not much, but the street to the school is clearly marked. The Eagles roost here, and there are signs pointing the way, and eagle tracks painted on the pavement.
Urban folks and politicos who want all these small schools consolidated have no idea of the distances involved and the communities sustained with local tax dollars. They speak out of two sides of their mouths, fleeing intercity schools, but that is a different journey and subject, except that it illustrates the divide between urban and rural in this state in more than just economics and politics.

A testament to lost hopes...

Lamont, settled in 1893 was named for President Cleveland's secretary of war, Daniel Lamont. Today, there is a veterans memorial, with an aging armored military unit out front of the granite memorial, in the town park, with the slender water tower overhead. There are lots of boarded up buildings and houses, testaments to lost hopes and happy times. The most modern building in town is the Methodist church, a heritage of steadfast  faith that continues from settlement to now.
I could have spent more time here taking photos, and wish I had. In fact, as I kept driving west, I saw multiple grain elevators off on side roads, beacons or tombstones to other small towns, beckoning for a trip and more photos, more stories of the good people of rural Oklahoma.

First Methodist Church, Lamont, a heritage of steadfast faith

(Information on Lamont from Oklahoma Place Names, George Shirk)

• Next, Greasy Steve's, and Pond Creek.