A small but appreciative group gathered at the Junction Township Cemetery May 30 to witness the offering of military honors at the grave of Sergeant Isaac Ford. Ford served in Company I, 2nd Iowa Cavalry in the Civil War. He moved from Jones County after the Civil War and died at Grand Junction in 1906.
Ford’s grave was previously unmarked as a military grave. Local genealogists did the necessary paperwork to obtain a military grave marker from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the cost of installing the marker was covered by Aaron Schroeder of Slininger-Rossow Funeral Home.
Graveside military honors were provided by Company A, 49th Regiment, Iowa Veteran Volunteer Infantry, better known as “The Governor’s Own Iowa Rifles.” Ten members of the unit participated in the ceremony, all wearing the full uniform of Civil War Union soldiers.
First lieutenant David Lamb (front, right) conducted the ceremony and provided historic information. He noted that military honors should be done only once at a military grave, and that prior to doing the ceremony, the 49th Iowa does thorough research to be sure the honors have not previously been done. The group has done seven ceremonies in the past year, he said. The ceremony done at Ford’s grave was a version of the modern ceremony used when a cremation has been done and no casket is present.
Presenting an American flag to a relative is part of the ceremony. The flag was presented Saturday to Ford’s great-great-grandson Richard Van Pelt (front, left).
49th Iowa bugler Paul Stigers of Des Moines felt a special kinship to Saturday’s ceremony. Ford was a bugler in Company I. Stigers’ great-great-grandfather William Eshbaugh of Marshalltown was bugler in Company B, 2nd Iowa Cavalry. Stiger said it was very likely the two men knew each other. “A hundred fifty years later, there’s a connection. It’s strange,” Stiger said.
After the ceremony for Ford, the group visited the nearby grave of Robert G. Martin. Martin, who served in Company D, 188th Ohio Infantry Regiment, died in 1944 at the age of 95. The Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War identified Martin as the last surviving Civil War Union veteran in Greene County and marked his grave as such. The Sons have marked the grave of the last survivor in every Iowa county.
Over the course of the past six years, members of the 49th Iowa have requisitioned and facilitated the placement of close to 300 stones for veterans of all wars, and have recorded the final resting places of more than 2,000 Civil War, War of 1812, and Revolutionary War soldiers.
The group is currently working on re-constructing an entire rural cemetery (and replacing 19 stones therein) in southeast Iowa; assisting in the building of a monument to six brothers from the same family who perished during the Civil War; restoration of the grave of Governor Samuel Merrill; and honoring a soldier buried in the tiny cemetery at Kirkland. That soldier fought in the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte, the War of 1812, the Blackhawk War, Mexican War, and served in the 37th Iowa “Greybeards”.
