Forgotten Civil War veteran will finally get proper tombstone, thanks to two NY middle school students
A forgotten Civil War veteran who died without a proper burial is finally receiving recognition, thanks to two eighth-grade students in New York.Kendall Peruzzini and Mary McCormick spoke with Fox News Digital on Wednesday about their efforts to commemorate Daniel Walterhouse, a Union Army veteran who died in 1910.Both teens attend Albion Middle School in western New York.Walterhouse, who was born in Orleans County, New York, in 1823, died at the Orleans County Alms House at around 87 years of age.
He was a Orleans County native who enrolled in the Fourth Michigan Infantry in 1861.Tim Archer, a retired service learning teacher at Albion Middle School, told Fox News Digital that the former Union soldier spent around a decade of his life at the poorhouse.He had been injured during the war and spent time in a Confederate prison camp.“[The almshouse] was a place where people that didn’t have anybody to care for them came,” the teacher explained.
“Anyone from [people] with mental, physical disabilities, babies that were unwanted up to the elderly, immigrants that didn’t have family in the area, and blind people.”The Orleans County Alms House was in operation from the 1830s to 1960, according to Archer.In 1910, Walterhouse was buried in an unmarked grave in a section of the poorhouse’s cemetery for people who couldn’t afford a headstone.Archer was familiar with the cemetery for years, but was contacted by a historian from Michigan who inquired about a Civil War veteran buried in the cemetery.
The retired educator presented the research opportunity to McCormick’s mother, a secretary at the school. In Archer’s mind, there were no better researchers to take the summer break opportunity than Peruzzini and McCormick.“I’ve had both of these girls as students a couple of years ago prior to my retirement, so I knew they were good students and great girls,” Archer explained.“I knew they’d be good researchers, and I knew they’d be willing, ...