Hero Central: Civil War Cemetery Mystery Solved

WASHINGTON, DC -- One hundred forty-five years ago this month, forty Union soldiers died defending Washington during the Battle of Fort Stevens. They were buried on that ground which became Battleground National Cemetery on Georgia Avenue in Northwest DC. It was there that a National Park Service Ranger made a discovery that would change his life and the lives of those forty men forever.

"If it wasn't for these men right here, DC might have fallen. So this is extremely hallowed ground," said Ranger Ron Harvey, a 15-year veteran of the National Park Service.

The names of those soldiers have been carved in tombstones for more than century, but Ranger Harvey began to question those names ten years ago.

"When I started reading the headstones, I wanted to find out more about these men. I knew they were killed during the battle, but that's all I knew," said Harvey. "Once I began researching the men interred here, five of these headstones just kept giving me problems. The names weren't adding up."

That led Harvey on a decade-long quest to find out who really died during Washington's only Civil War battle.

"I'd wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and go well what about this guy, what about this regiment? Yea, I drove my co-workers nuts," said Harvey.

After nine years of digging through old Civil War records, Harvey's hard work paid off.

"Right around August 2008, you could have heard me screaming yahoo all across this region. I was able to find out who these men were."

In total, Harvey found that five soldiers had been misidentified. Their correct names were: Private Wilhelm Frei, Corporal Edward Garvin, Private Thomas McIntyre, Private John Kennedy, and First Lieutenant Richard Castle.

"After nine years of committing myself to these men and their stories, to finally have them recognized, I got pretty weepy," said Harvey. "Hopefully they'll rest in peace now. Their stories, their lives, their names will never be forgotten again."

Harvey says his next project is to find the descendants of those five misidentified soldiers and tell them about their family's Civil War legacy.