HARMON, Alma

HARMON

Posted By: Cheryl Bills (email)
Date: 11/6/2003 at 12:16:18

Glenwood Opinion-Tribune, Thursday, May 30, 1935:

MOVE OLD SOLDIER FROM PAUPER'S FIELD

Clarence B. DAY, local member of the Legion graves registration committee, who has found many soldiers of this
nation's various wars sleeping in an unmarked grave, found one Civil War veteran whose body had been buried in the
pauper's 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 Iowa 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 and welfare, 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 been reposed in the 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 soldier's lot between the graves of two of his old
comrades where his remains right(fully) belong and where an appropriate marker has been placed as a fitting tribute to his memory.