Published: October 23, 2009 02:44 pm      

Civil War vet gets full Army funeral 95 years after his death

BY ART BUKOWSKI

CNHI News Service

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — John P. Sinclair lay in an unmarked grave for 95 years, his plot tucked between other Civil War veterans under a stand of gnarled old trees in an historic cemetery.

Sinclair, an Ohio native and Union Army sergeant, died at age 73 near the shores of Long Lake in 1913. He was buried in the Oakwood Cemetery the next year. It’s believed his grave never had a headstone, possibly because no family could be located to pay for one.

Sinclair received a brand new marble headstone and burial service Saturday after a group of Civil War enthusiasts tracked him down. The group, Battle Creek, Mich.-based Robinson’s Battery, is in the process of finding the final resting places of all the members of the unit its honors, Battery C of the 1st Michigan Light Artillery.

“It’s sort of a labor of love, trying to get all of them present and accounted for,” said Deb Gosselin, the group’s historian.

Gosselin used a series of records and a 1914 article in the Traverse City Record-Eagle to determine Sinclair was in the cemetery. Records indicate names of the soldiers buried on either side of him, leading the group to his plot.

Robinson’s battery contacted a local Sons of Union Veterans group. The enthusiasts joined to re-enact a full Grand Army of the Republic burial service. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs paid for a reproduction Civil War-era headstone.

“It’s one of the things [we] do to keep alive the memory of those who fought,” said Neal Breaugh, secretary of the local Civil War group, The Robert Finch Camp No. 14. “ ... It’s important to society that these people be remembered and the Civil War be remembered,”

Among those gathered for the ceremony was Traverse City resident Chris Campbell, 62, Sinclair’s cousin four times removed. He learned of the service last week, through a story in the local newspaper.

“This is really cool. As my brother said, now we don’t have to do it,” he joked.

Campbell believes his ancestor would be honored by the formal funeral and headstone.

“How surprised he would be, I think, that anyone would remember him 100 years later,” he said.

Honoring the memory of Sinclair and his fellow soldiers is what drives Robinson’s Battery, which so far has tracked down about 110 of the 130 members.

“This was just a group of people. There were good guys, and there were bad guys, people that went on to fame and fortune and people who died like (Sinclair),” Gosselin said. “It does make you feel good to restore this person to the place in history that he deserves.”



Levi Cummings, 4, of Alden, Mich., watches the rededication of the grave of Sgt. John P. Sinclair on Saturday. Civil War enthusiasts who found Sinclair’s unmarked grave in a historic Traverse City cemetery gave him a full Union Army funeral 95 years after his death. Photo by Jan-Michael Stump / Traverse City, Mich., Record-Eagle)



Jeff Morse, of The Robert Finch Camp No. 14, Sons of Union Veterans, places a flag at the rededicated grave of Sgt. John P. Sinclair in Traverse City, Mich.’s Oakwood Cemetery on Saturday. (Photo by Jan-Michael Stump / Traverse City, Mich., Record-Eagle)