Mostly Clear, 53° F
The Wyoming territory didn’t come into existence until 1868, roughly 90 years after the American Revolution, so the Park County Sons of the American Revolution group is understandably …
This item is available in full to subscribers.
The Powell Tribune has expanded its online content. To continue reading, you will need to either log in to your subscriber account, or purchase a subscription.
If you are a current print subscriber, you can set up a free web account by clicking here.
If you already have a web account, but need to reset it, you can do so by clicking here.
If you would like to purchase a subscription click here.
Please log in to continue |
|
The Wyoming territory didn’t come into existence until 1868, roughly 90 years after the American Revolution, so the Park County Sons of the American Revolution group is understandably unable to honor veterans from that war who are buried in one of the last parts of the state to be settled by Americans moving westward.
Instead, the small group has been finding and, when possible, honoring veterans from other wars who are buried in Park County, including the U.S. Civil War and World War I. Recently the group presented to county commissioners their newest honors, bestowed on nine Spanish-American War veterans buried in the county.
They identified veterans of the war buried in Powell and Cody, even Clark.
“They were a ways away, and served the country for a few months during the Spanish-American War,” SAR chapter president Keith Francik said. “We felt we could enhance the public’s knowledge of that, and perhaps someone in the future could do research and find that to be a valuable part of our county archives.”
The war, fought in Cuba and the Philippines, was the first to involve Wyoming units as the state had only been incorporated eight years before the outbreak of war in 1898. Francik said all of the veterans they found had served in the Philippines, like Cuba, a Spanish possession at the start of the war, and two of the veterans served with the same Wyoming infantry battalion. The others served in units throughout the country, from New York to Colorado, but all wound up buried in Park County cemeteries.
All of the graves now include a medallion honoring the service of the men in an often forgotten war.
Member Walt Hartung did a lot of the investigating into the lives of the veterans, utilizing the state and county archives as well as the database of historic newspapers the state maintains to find out where they lived, who they were married to and what they did. He was even able to reach out to a descendant of one of the men.
“That’s one of the things that we try and do is to make it a personal,” he said. “I actually contacted a descendant of one of the individuals and they were just absolutely pleased that someone had taken the time to research one of their great grandparents. I sent them all the information we had — it’s been rewarding.”
