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Information was taken from
the following Sources
GRAVE REGISTRATION CARDS
A series of card files in the
offices of the County Recorder, Mahoning County courthouse,
Youngstown, Ohio, contain information on the burials of known
war veterans—from the Revolution to through Vietnam and beyond.
The cards are arranged alphabetically under the names of the
cemeteries in which the veterans are buried.
The original file
was compiled by the WPA in the 1930s and is kept current by
periodically adding lists of veterans' deaths sent from the Ohio
Department of Health in Columbus. Data on the cards varies,
depending on the time period. Current cards have dates of birth
and burial, branch of service, and grave location. Older cards
also include places of birth and death, sometimes the cause of
death and/or the next of kin, and details of military service.
All information on the cards is included here.
The files are not
complete, of course, especially for veterans of early wars. Some
veterans whose tombstone inscriptions attest to military service
are not represented in the files. Many of the dates given do not
match the inscriptions on the stones; and in cases where the
dates obviously came from the stone, the inscription was
sometimes read incorrectly. On the other hand, there are
complete dates of birth and death/burial for many recent
veterans whose stones bear only year dates. There are a number
of those elusive places of birth; and occasionally the source of
the information is given.
GEORGE W. WASHBURN’S NOTEBOOK
Entries marked
with an asterisk [*], prior to page numbers, are from George W.
Washburn’s notebook. A member of the GOP [Grand Army of the
Republic], Mr. Washburn kept a small notebook of the locations
of the burial sites of Civil War Soldiers in Mahoning County.
Oak Hill has a Xerox copy of the notebook. He also listed a few
veterans of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the
Spanish American War. Sometimes he gave the soldier’s age and
his rank. There are a few errors, so they should be checked with
other records.
HENRY BALDWIN’S INSCRIPTIONS
In the early
years of the last century Henry R. Baldwin, local historian and
Revolutionary War enthusiast, copied tombstone inscriptions in
most of the area cemeteries. Since he was interested in the
possibility of Revolutionary service, he concentrated on the
oldest stones, usually including the wives and those he felt
might be sons of Revolutionary soldiers. He was especially apt
to copy wives and sons if the stone for the husband was not
there. We can be grateful that the stones he did copy were the
old ones which are either missing or have become more worn and
difficult to read in the nearly ninety years since Mr. Baldwin
was traveling around the countryside in his horse and buggy.
His copying was
quite accurate, though please note that he usually gives a birth
year figured from the death date and age. In nearly all
instances this birth year does not actually appear on the
stone. He usually identifies a woman as the wife of someone, but
this is not always on the stone. Mr. Baldwin is also inclined
to give a surname the common spelling regardless of the spelling
on the stone, i.e. Fink for Finck, Miller for Müller, etc.
Comments such as
"Revolutionary Soldier" or "Captain, War of 1812" are nearly
always Mr. Baldwin’s own. In most instances, if he cited the
Pennsylvania Archives to show possible Revolutionary
service, remember that this simply means a person of that name
rendered that service and corroborating evidence is needed to
show it was for this particular man.
The
manuscript records of Henry Baldwin are available at the Public
Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County, 305 Wick Avenue,
Youngstown Ohio. The cemetery records were typed by staff some
fifty years ago and an index prepared for them, as well as for
Mr. Baldwin’s ledgers. These records have been photocopied by
the Genealogy Section of the Fort Wayne Public Library, Fort
Wayne, Indiana, and may also be consulted there. |
