Bill and Diana Sowers
, Lincoln County CoordinatorsTracee Hamilton, Lincoln County Coordinator
The story of the tragic death and burial of Joshua Simmons, Civil War veteran, in a neglected grave on a knoll west of Lincoln, is beginning to take on statewide significance. The Wichita Beacon became interested in the story and called local Lincoln citizens last week for further particulars concerning the story and in its issue of Monday, June 9, shed the following new twist to the narrative:
Officials in Washington now are considering what to do about the unmarked grave of a Civil War Veteran in Lincoln county, E.J. Klag said Monday.
The head of the Wichita Veterans Administration office said his file in the case has been forwarded to Washington, "where they decide such matters."
The grave is that of Joshua Simmons, a rifleman in Co. E., 13th Iowa Infantry, who was drowned while fording the rain-swollen Saline river near the county seat of Lincoln county in 1878 ' 13 years after his discharge from the Army.
Klag said Art Rose, administrative assistant for the Kansas Veterans' Commission, called the unmarked grave to his attention.
He said Rose had been contacted by Bill Headley, correspondent for the Lincoln Sentinel-Republican, county seat weekly. A descendant of Simmons' widow, who remarried, had told Headley the story.
King said Rose told him bodies of three of Simmons' children are buried beside that of their father in a small plot on the Wilton Markley farm. Small headstones marked the graves of the children. Headly has put a temporary marker at the veteran's grave.
Relatives could get a burial allowance from VA, Klag said, if they choose disinterment, and reburial in a national cemetery. But disinterment might disturb the bodies of the children, he added, and a permanent and appropriate marker could be supplied by the Army's Quartermaster General for Simmons' present grave.