Finding the Civil War veteran’s headstone, with its white marble outshining the dull, weathered gray of other markers, was easy.
Getting it to the Loudon cemetery, however, was not.
It took 55 years, during which time the crate-held stone collected dust at, of all places, an old chicken coop at D.S. Cole Growers in Loudon.
Meanwhile, Tristram Stevens lay 2 miles away at Mount Hope Cemetery in an unmarked grave, his last name on a plot map at the entrance identifying those buried there. All others on the chart had their first names included.
Soldier and stone met informally 10 days ago, when the rectangular hunk of marble with the arched top, built in 1961, 58 years after Stevens’s death, was placed over the veteran’s remains.
“I think it’s great, a really big deal,” said Bob Laquerre, a maintenance worker at Cole Growers who helped move this process along. “I called channel 9 and Good Morning America, and my wife and I were pissed off because they did nothing about it. This is an amazing story about a war veteran, and no one seemed to care.”
We did. This is a mystery, about an unmarked grave in Loudon with no permanent tribute attached to it for nearly six decades. And it’s about a tombstone finally coming to town, then getting lost in town for another 5½ decades before finding its way home.
No one seems to know why.
This is also an illustration of community spirit at its best, led by a group of volunteers that formed an email trail of curiosity and fact-finding that will lead to a service Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Mount Hope Cemetery. They’re paying tribute to our tomb of the known soldier who, essentially, was unknown until now.
The cast of characters includes Laquerre and his boss, Doug Cole; Mary Morin, director of the New Hampshire Office of Veterans Services; Mike Horne, director of the New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery; Chris Benedetto, chairman of Company A, 5th Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers; Cynthia Babonis, secretary of the Loudon Historical Society; and Stan Prescott, secretary treasurer of the Union Cemetery Association.
They joined hands to create a human chain that led to that lonely plot of dirt. Start about nine years ago, when Laquerre found the stone in its crate, leaning against a wall in a far corner of what used to be the chicken coop.
It’s dimly lit today, long, narrow and cluttered, with fork lifts and panes of glass and boxes and pallets. It was more congested back when Laquerre walked in that day.
“You could hardly get in here because there was so much stuff stored,” Laquerre said. He led me to the back and pointed. “There,” he said, his finger aimed at sheets of glass leaning near a window. That’s where the crate once sat, Laquerre told me.
On that day long ago, Laquerre pulled away some straw and stored items and saw the exposed front of the stone, dusty and dirt-stained.
The name was Tristram B Stevens. The stone revealed he had served in the 3 REGT NH INF. He lived from Jan. 10, 1826, to June 24, 1903.
“I Googled and could not find any family history,” Laquerre said. “I didn’t know what to think. Maybe he was cremated and his ashes were blown somewhere, but I didn’t know, and you get busy with stuff, so I forgot about it.”
Enter Cole. They moved the stone to the front of the chicken coop, by the door, and, passing it daily this spring, felt the need to act.
“We thought this was stupid,” Cole said. “We thought this has to go somewhere.”
Thus began a chain reaction of communication, from Laquerre to Morin to Horne to Benedetto to Babonis to, finally, Prescott.
Benedetto has a starring role here. He’s been a Civil War re-enactor for 20 years. Thanks to his research, he’s posted memorial markers at the veterans cemetery in Boscawen for nameless Civil War veterans killed in action.
He did some digging here and, according to the 1860 Census, learned that Stevens was born in Loudon in 1826. He was a shoemaker who married and fathered a son, John, who was 3 when the Civil War started, in 1861. He enlisted in the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment, was injured in South Carolina and later joined General Ulysses S. Grant during the siege of Richmond.
“It’s rare you hear of a Civil War headstone that was never placed on the veteran’s grave,” Benedetto said by email. “So I’m proud to be a part of this to honor Private Stevens.”
Prescott found another key to this locked mystery, about Stevens after his death in 1903, and his burial in Loudon.
Prescott was familiar with a man named Herman Annis, who years ago owned the chicken coop and farmland around it. Turns out Annis was the superintendent of the Union Cemetery Association when Prescott was a kid, and Prescott’s father was friends with Annis.
With access to old notebooks and yellow paper torn from legal pads, Prescott found Stevens’s name.
“Headstone arrived April 1961,” said one passage, handwritten in script.
And while that revealed some answers, it also left some questions. For example, why did it take 58 years to inscribe a headstone?
“Maybe he did not have family or they could not afford a stone,” Prescott said. “That does happen.
“Mr. Annis . . . liked to see veterans taken care of,” Prescott continued, “and I’m sure he ordered the stone as well.”
Fine. But what the heck was this beautiful piece of marble, marking an important piece of history, doing in a musty chicken coop for so long?
“I don’t know if Mr. Annis received it and put it in the coop and forgot about it,” Prescott said.
Doubtful, of course.
But it’s in the open now, waiting to be displayed in Saturday’s ceremony that will feature a chaplain’s prayer, fife music and a few words from Benedetto.
I visited Tristram Stevens’s grave on a hot, dry day recently. The cemetery has iron doors, a three-rail fiberglass fence and stone pillars surrounding it. Massive, white Loudon Congregational Church, badly in need of a paint job, stands guard over the land.
Laquerre had wiped off the stone’s excess dirt, and it looks new, like one of thousands of glowing grave markers at Normandy Beach. It’s in a back stretch of Mount Hope, along a fence, easily distinguishable from stones that have been weathered by time and rain and heat and erosion.
An unseen rooster crowed and summer bugs added to the chorus, their wings rubbing together.
“Just glad we found it a home,” Laquerre said.