Published: September 22, 2008 10:07 am      

Soldier’s last salute

Sons of Union Veterans dedicate two gravestones in Corbin

By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

After serving his country in a time of war, Barbourville-born Elcana Goodin lived a long life, fathered 11 children, and died in Corbin at age 78. As a United States veteran, Goodin was entitled to a gravestone and military funeral rites.

In his case, it took 97 years to receive them.

Members of the Sgt. Elijah P. Marrs Camp 5 Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War dedicated two new headstones Sunday at the Corbin grave sites of two local men who fought during the Civil War.

Both men — Private Elcana Goodin and Corporal David Cummins — are the great-great-grandfathers of Ben Hart, whose interest in genealogy led to Sunday’s events.

“David Cummins and Elcana Goodin were the grandparents of our grandparents, so it’s been a lot of research trying to find them and locate them,” Hart said. “(Goodin) did not have a stone and so I was seeing about getting him a stone, and a lady from Albuquerque, N.M. got in touch with me. She is a relative, and she was asking about her grandfather, who is Elcana’s eldest son by his second marriage... about a week later I told her about Elcana and about a week later she sent me an e-mail showing me that he was in the Civil War and had a pension number.”

Hart was able to obtain Goodin’s war records and, with the help of the Sons of Union Veterans, able to get a headstone provided by the federal government.

Hart found Goodin’s final resting place in Corbin’s Monhollen Cemetery from his death certificate — 1911 was the first year that Kentucky issued them.

Hart said that, according to the 1910 census, 77-year-old Goodin had a 6-year-old daughter.

“Good genes,” Hart joked.

Cummins’ grave is located in Pine Hill Cemetery, where the first of the two ceremonies was held. Oddly enough, both men — who would later become in-laws — were described in military documents as 5 feet, 10 inches tall, with fair complexion, blue eyes and light hair.

Cummins was wounded in Vicksburg, Miss. in May 1863, where he suffered a hip wound and was hospitalized for three months. Cummins, who died in 1923 at age 83, received a new headstone Sunday, made to the standard configuration at the time of the Civil War.

During the dedication, camp members gave a firing salute with guns and mortar rounds, family members laid a wreath upon the grave, and a bugler performed “Taps.”

The Nicholasville-based Union Camp has about 30 members and performs four to five gravestone dedications a year.

“We’ve gone to some over in Western Kentucky, wherever the need lies,” said Commander John Burch Sr. “We are giving proper military honors for fallen soldiers who never had them the first time around, in this case, never even had a stone.”

The group also files GPS locations of veterans’ graves so they can be listed on a public Web site.

“No veteran should be lying in an unmarked grave,” said honor guard member Tracy Lucas. “They should have military honors. This nation made a promise to these men and I intend to keep it.”

Though the eastern part of Kentucky was more inclined to favor the Union during the war, Burch acknowledged that the Sons of Confederate Veterans organizations are much more active in the area.

“They’re a much bigger organization than we are,” Burch said. “They take it more personally, it seems.”

Hart, who has since joined the Elijah Marrs Camp, was born in Corbin in 1939 and now lives outside of Cincinnati.

“My aunt Ruth Hart, who used to live here in Corbin, wrote five books on genealogy,” he said. “The last book was on the Hart side of the family ... it was two volumes, 2,500 pages, that she wrote on a portable typewriter. And she didn’t type — it was hunt and peck, and she spent something like 18 years on it... (Genealogy) is a lot of fun, it can become almost a disease, you just want to keep finding the next name to put down, but it’s a lot of fun and Corbin is very rich in its history.”