HARMON, Alma - Civil War Veteran burial

DAY, HARMON, RAYNOR

Posted By: Roseanna Zehner (email)
Date: 7/1/2005 at 06:59:10

Glenwood Opinion Tribune
May 30, 1935

Clarence B. Day, local member of the Legion graves registration committee, who has found many soldiers of the nations various wars sleeping in an unmarked grave, found one Civil war veteran whose body had been buried in the paupers field in the Glenwood cemetery.

This was the body of Alma Harmon, who served as a Mills County recruit during the Civil war in the 4th Infantry, from which he received an honorable discharge because of disability. He died Feb. 3, 1881.

Only one relative, and this person residing at some distance, was located and granted permission for the remains to be moved to the soldier’s lot.

On last Friday morning a group of American Legion men, in the presence of Coroner F.H. Raynor, who represented the state department of health, which had granted permission for the disinterment, made the excavation.

Only the handles of the casket were found, but the entire bone structure which had reposed in its earthen bed for 54 years was found to be intact. The bony fingers of the skeleton were crossed over the breast just as the hands had been folded in earth’s last sleep. Although all traces of the garments were gone the buttons remained in position on the bone framework, and a bow tie, the only article of dress, was in position about the neck.

This material remains of he who had once offered his life in the service of his nation was reverently assembled and placed in an appropriate box and placed in a position of honor in the soldiers lot between the graves of two of his old comrades, where his remains at right belong, and where an appropriate marker has been placed as a fitting tribute to his memory.