The Descendant Community of Milwaukee County Grounds Cemeteries Inc., a newly formed nonprofit aimed at providing ethical care for about 10,000 individuals once buried at four cemeteries on the Milwaukee County Grounds between 1852 and 1974, will host a veterans’ headstone recognition and dedication on Veterans Day.
The individuals buried in the cemeteries were often marginalized because they were poor, afflicted or unknown at the time of their deaths even though many helped build Milwaukee, according to the organization.
On Saturday, Veterans Day, the group will host the event at 11 a.m. at Cemetery 3 at Milwaukee County Grounds Park, north of West Watertown Plank Road near North 87th Street, in collaboration with various community partners.
Tell us who you’d pick to be a Betty this year!
Six soldiers whose names were discovered in historical burial records will receive recognition. They are:
- G. Friedrich Bartsch (1828-1875), Civil War soldier buried in Cemetery 1.
- August Behrens (1828-1903), a U.S. Infantry volunteer with 24 years of service, buried in Cemetery 2.
- Charles H. Bender (1821-1883), a Civil War soldier, also buried in Cemetery 2.
- William Herman Benz (1831-1909), a Civil War soldier and former prisoner of war, buried in Cemetery 2.
- Fred D. Carlos (1878-1929), a Spanish American volunteer soldier, buried in Cemetery 3.
- William B. Craig (1850-1901), a Civil War volunteer drummer boy, buried in Cemetery 2.
Four of the six soldiers resided at the Milwaukee Soldiers Home on the grounds of the Clement J. Zablocki Veterans’ Administration Medical Center, built in 1867 as a place of healing for veterans returning from the Civil War. But instead of a soldier’s burial at Wood National Cemetery on the VA Medical Center property, they were provided a pauper’s burial on the County Grounds.
These are but a few of the individuals interred at the County Grounds’ cemeteries, the group noted.
Exhumations and desecrations have occurred at some of the County Grounds cemeteries, and the organization’s leaders said they are working to bring recognition and ethical care to these resting places.
“We are steadily increasing nationwide awareness of the four cemeteries on the Milwaukee County Grounds and their tumultuous history,” the group stated. In 1991-92 and 2013, a total of 2,480 individuals were exhumed from Cemetery 2 for development at the County Grounds, while another 1,000 burial plots were paved over in the early construction of Doyne Avenue, according to the organization.
The exhumed Milwaukee County pioneers are curated at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for research purposes. This collection represents the country’s largest and longest-held group of exhumed human remains.
The mission of the Descendant Community of Milwaukee County Grounds Cemeteries is to provide programs and projects that serve individuals and families whose ancestors were buried at the cemeteries and those seeking to understand the history at the County Grounds.
To learn more, go to: descendantcommunity.org.
