During November’s meeting in the historic “Hut,” we saw an invitation from Wreaths Across America to participate at a local level. November was too late to muster a program. But it triggered the thought process about the opportunities for county residents to honor their deceased veterans.
Our study revealed that Hampton County, S.C., a rural county made up of 563 sq. mi., contains 195 cemeteries, some of which are on private property. Some are family cemeteries on plantations. Some are down heavily rutted, rain-gullied dirt roads.
A file was given to the Legion by the Hampton County Visitor’s Center with 22,212 names of Hampton County deceased.
After manipulating this data, it was determined that 125 of those cemeteries contained American veterans. A handful trace back to the Spanish-American War, the War of 1812 and the Revolutionary War. 498 were members of the CSA.
Initially, we identified 1,710 veterans and in which county cemetery each is interred. We know them to be veterans because their headstone had a clarifying remark engraved, such as “Army,” “Colonel,” “WWII” or “1st Infantry Battalion,” and was recorded beside their entry on the master list of county dead.
Only those with some marker that tied them to the military were discovered. This opens up the possibility that many more than 1,800 are buried here, but their military affiliation is unknown and therefore unrecognized, or not counted. However, we do not know the logistical spot where each veteran is buried among the other deceased citizens buried in that cemetery.
When Wreaths Across America places wreaths in national cemeteries, wreaths are laid on each headstone, because each headstone is placed at a veteran’s grave. Volunteers blanket the cemetery and place a wreath at each headstone.
Our challenge was to locate each veteran’s gravesite, to reach the 125 cemeteries in a timely manner after our remembrance ceremony.
Our members don’t know locations of the deceased, but each veteran’s living family does. We took the approach to offer live balsam wreaths to Hampton County citizens to place on their veteran’s gravesite themselves. They are familiar with their hero’s grave and can go directly to it.
A few cemetery coordinators heard of our effort and shared their roster with us, which were merged. Names previously missing were shared back with them. Through this sharing, our list has grown from 1,710 to 1,828.
Our web presence is at www.wreathsacrossamerica.org/schamc.