A gravestone at Blossom Hill Cemetery, nearly 130 years old, only tells part of the story.
The most important part – the names and hometowns of the Civil War veterans buried at that spot – remains a mystery that may never be solved.
It’s a Memorial Day kind of story. About the tribute to 11 unknown Union soldiers who died in Concord near the end of the war, in 1865, after cruel treatment at a Confederate POW camp in the South.
They’re buried with other Civil War veterans on a grassy, circular hill, noticeably separate from the rest of the stones and markers in this gigantic cemetery.
You can visit veterans like Leander Barnes, who died in 1904. Franklin Shattuck died in 1929, George Towns in 1931. Those markers, about two feet high, were stained green, with writing that forces you to move closer. Look hard, though, and most of them are legible.
Meanwhile, the stone dedicated to the 11 unknown soldiers is quite the opposite. Clear writing. No names.
“I don’t know much about it, and that’s the unsettling part,” Blossom Hill administrator Jill McDaniel-Huckins said. “I would really love to know, I would love to get those veterans named, make records for them with their actual names on it.”
We spoke in her office, complete with humidity and a fan. She’s been working at Blossom Hill Cemetery for 15 years. She immediately wanted to know what was in the basement at the Blossom headquarters, facing North State Street.
She found stuff, keys to the past. She brought the material to her office the other day and placed it on her desk. A brown notebook, faded and dusty like an old western town, filled with names and dates, written with pen, line by line. Index-like cards with names and dates, typed. She knew who was buried and when.
“I found those all down in the cellar on bottom shelves from the roof piled on top of it,” McDaniel-Huckins said. “When I came here I was snooping around and I said, ‘Oh, my word. These are priceless.’ ”
George West joined us. He started working at Blossom Hill in high school, 50 years ago. He had little information.
“I worked in the office off and on before Jill,” West said, “and her bosses before that never mentioned any of this. She came in and did such an excellent job going through everything. I actually didn’t know about this until she got the information.”
Jim Spain of Concord knows more than anyone, recalling history as though he had charged the enemy at Gettysburg. He admits he’s obsessed with this mystery and says he’ll never give up searching.
“I think about it all the time,” Spain said by phone. “I think about it more on Memorial Day Weekend. The answer might be hidden in someone’s diary in an attic in an obscure house somewhere.”
Maybe. For now, though, the story comes from local historians like Spain and former Monitor editor Mike Pride, both of whom have dedicated huge portions of their lives to digging and writing about the War Between the States.
Spain cited the cruel treatment Union soldiers suffered at Confederate POW camps. The deadliest was Andersonville Prison in Georgia, where nearly 13,000 Union soldiers died among the 45,000 taken captive.
The anonymous 11 were captured and taken to Andersonville. Spain said they most likely had a reference to New Hampshire on their uniforms.
Names, though? Hometowns? No. Dog tags were not worn then.
They rode the train to Concord, bringing their serious wounds with them. They were unconscious, traumatized, emotionally wrecked, dying.
In essence, they were sent to the State Hospital to die.
“Some were so ill at the concentration camps that they did not know what to do with them,” Spain told me. “They never regained consciousness and they died in their tattered uniforms in Concord. When they got here, there was no way to identify them. They were buried at Blossom Hill.”
Twenty-two markers line the outer edge of the grassy, circular hill. Those stones have names and dates. Interspersed between them are six Civil War cannons, partially buried, alternating from pointing upward and downward. Spain said that represents peace and homage.
There’s a long flagpole topped by an American flag waving from the center point of the circle.
The stone honoring the 11 soldiers sits a few feet back from the outer edge, toward the middle, close to the circular formation but still so far away.
The headstone says the men died in 1865. The marker was dedicated in 1893. The lettering remains clear.
Unlike the full story.
“There’s never really been any research that I’ve been involved with,” West said. “It’s so old, so we just maintain it. Every Memorial Day, we make sure the flags get up.”