Gravestone Dedication for Civil War veterans

The dedication ceremony will include participants in uniforms and a procession to each grave. It will be held in the Northwestern part of the cemetery, beginning in Section 4, along West Forest Home Avenue and South 27th Street.

These soldiers span the gamut of service – one is a man who enlisted eight days after Fort Sumter and the other, a draftee in September 1864. Both were on duty at the end of the war.

One stone is for Pvt. Theodore Carl, 18th Wisconsin Infantry, Co. B., who was a draftee serving from Sept. 21, 1864 to July 2, 1865. Carl died at age 72 in 1902.

The second stone is for 1st Sgt. Thomas J. Franey, who enlisted on April 20, 1861 in the 1st Wisconsin Infrantry (3-month unit), Co. B. He served from Aug. 21 1861, then was in the 19th Wisconsin Infrantry, Co. E, from Jan. 15, 1862 – Aug. 9, 1865.

Franey died at age 55 in 1889 and is buried in Section 15. His grave is in the distintive lot of the Odd Fellows, a historical fraternal organization that dates to 1835 in Wisconsin and earlier in England.

The new stones are funded by C.K. Pier Badger Camp #1 and Auxiliary 4. These groups are part of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, the congressionally chartered successor to the Grand Army of the Republic. The Camp and Auxiliary have been Milwaukee patriotic institutions for more than 120 years.

These stones are the lastest in more than a decade of effort, as part of the monument of preservation through the Adopt a Soldier program of the Forest Home Historic Preservation Assocation the 501c3 nonprofit organization.

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