November 2011
Soldier Resources at the Fort
Our volunteer and superior organizer of materials, Dee Perry, has been busy on a special project at The Fort again. This time Dee has found and organized much of our material on soldiers that had been collected over the years. Our founder, Verda Gerwick, had a special place in her heart for her “soldier boys.” The amount of material on hand in boxes and files dating from as far back as the the Revolutionary War about local people who served our country, has been gleened and organized on a long shelf, full of books, newspaper articles, and a large variety of information that might be useful to families and relatives of those soldiers or just folks who have a fascination for that type of information.
Even though we have had much of this information for years, it was never in a condition that specific facts could be easily found. Thanks to Dee’s organizational skills, we now have the materials somewhat in chronological order and some of it is even arranged by county. We are so proud now to be able to point out our special collection of soldier material and encourage our volunteers to add to that collection with the new logical way to file and preserve the information.
One feature of our entire obit collection in the building is that our volunteers have always tried to affixed an American Flag symbol on the obit page of each veteran and note their service in our files. Our special affinity for soldiers has been a priority around here for many years. An invaluable resource is the 1912 Soldiers of the Revolution and the War of 1812 Buried in McLean County by local historian of the times, Milo Custer. His information is priceless considering the few resources he had to help gather the data back in the early part of the century. We have tried to match some of his entries with our obits of local soldiers in the cemetery books on our shelves, too.
We also are the keeper of some local 1812 grave markers that were placed in nearby cemeteries years ago to mark the grave of each War of 1812 veteran. When desperation caused folks to value the markers more as a resale item for scrap metal than for the value of marking a special gravesite, Verda began rescuing those markers and displaying them at The Fort to preserve them. We have about 25 or so of those old bronze markers hanging high on the walls around the room. Verda did the careful research and preserved the data so most of the bronze markers are identified with the personal information from each veteran whose grave it came from. Recently a volunteer for the Find a Grave organization was fulfilling a request by a veteran’s organization for a specific soldier’s gravestone and he came to The Fort for help with information. We were able to match up one of the 1812 markers on our wall with the soldier he was researching and he was able to photograph and send pictures of the soldier’s actual 1812 marker, thanks to its preservation by The Fort. Those are the times that make our efforts worthwhile.
With the celebration of The War of 1812 Bicentennial slated for 2012, we may be called upon for more information than usual from our newly organized files. All across America and Canada the War of 1812 will be commemorated with reenactments and studies of historical events. The United States and Canada share the longest border and the most successful neighboring relationship of probably any two countries in the world ... and historians say that all of that started with the end of the War of 1812 and it's something to be proudly recognized.
The War, which started in 1812 and lasted until 1815, pitted the growing United States against British forces mostly in Upper and Lower Canada. The U.S. had grown weary of British naval blockades hampering their trade abroad, and of Native Americans armed by the British Empire stunting their expansion into the northwest of the continent. The new Canadians, British troops, and their Native American allies fought the US troops in many battles. Any ideas of annexation by the Americans were crushed and the foundation for a lasting peace between the U.S. and Canada was formed once the conflict was over.