Civil War/150

Irish soldiers

"Though parades, battle reenactments, and speeches will be common to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, the mission of members of the 69th Pennsylvania Irish is different:

They find the burial spots of Civil War soldiers whose families could not afford gravestones. They sift through Philadelphia death records and look up cemetery plot maps. When they find a soldier, they file the required paperwork to get a headstone for the unmarked grave.

"We have located 350 of our soldiers around the country. Of those, we have put stones on 66," said Don Ernsberger, former Council Rock High School history teacher and author of five Civil War books, including Paddy Owen's Regulars about the 69th's Irish volunteers from Philadelphia...."