The names on the memorial are slowly disappearing because of its age. So the Historical Society consulted with Dodds Monuments in Springfield about refurbishing the memorial.
“The original was clean and in great shape for the age and the material it was made from,” said Josh Walters, sales manager for Dodds.
The material it was made of loses about 1/8 of an inch of stone every hundred years due to weather. He felt that it would do more damage if it was taken apart to refurbish. Instead, Waters suggested creating a new memorial and place it outside the fence of the original, which would display “a laser-etched pictorial of the Civil War.”
Tim DeVore, president of the Historical Society, has been talking with Civil War reenactors about the re-dedication of the memorial.
“The reenactors love this stuff,” DeVore said. “There is the possibility there might be four forward cannons there the day of the re-dedication.”
Research about the monument has led to articles from local papers of the same era about the memorial. Sandra Enyart, secretary to the board of the Historical Society, has found two articles printed in 1866 stating the monument was the first of its kind in the state.
“Sandra is doing all the research; she’s having a ball,” DeVore said.
Enyart has been researching the soldiers whose names are on the monument and their families for five years. Some of the names were misspelled, making the task more difficult. She wants the new memorial to be accurate, “with the names spelled correctly,” Enyart said.
The new memorial is to commemorate the original. It will be five feet tall and three feet wide and made of granite.
“It’s not a large memorial, over-powering the existing one,” Walters said. “It will last hundreds of thousands of years.”
For the high tech generation, a QR Code is to be etched on the new memorial. The code opens a webpage which will inform visitors about the names on the memorial.
“It’s to help tell the stories of the 31 soldiers,” DeVore said.
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