Green-Wood Cemetery did more than pay lip service to fallen veterans this Memorial Day, as its grounds were filled with the sights, sounds, and memories of the Civil War.
Hundreds of historians, descendants of Civil War veterans, and colorfully dressed re-enactors marched into the beloved boneyard behind a drum-and-fife corps and read the names of nearly 3,000 Civil War vets whose bodies were recently found to be buried on the Green-Wood grounds.
The cemetery initially thought that only a few hundred soldiers from the War Between the States were resting within its Sunset Park boundaries.
But further research uncovered 2,998 graves — almost all of them unmarked. And over the past few weeks, cemetery volunteers replaced 1,200 gravestones that had vanished in the 150 years since the war.
One of the new gravestones honored Beekman Moore Grannat, a Greenpoint native who was a corporal in the Union army.
He was also the great, great grandfather of Robert Cohen, who attended Monday’s event.
“It’s good to see the record of people who came before us,” he said. “The people who worked [organizing the event] did a fantastic job. It was something great.”
In addition to its Civil War vets, Green-Wood Cemetery is the final resting place of nearly 10 generations of New York legends, from Laura Keene, an actress who was on stage when Lincoln was shot, to Charles Ebbets, the former owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
