Beaver Dam Daily Citizen: First vets: Revolutionary War markers dedicated
BURNETT – The Wisconsin Society of the Sons of the American Revolution will host two grave marker dedications on Saturday.
The group will have a ceremony at the grave site of Gershom Noyes, in the Clyman Center Cemetery, at 10 a.m.
After a break, the group will reconvene at the grave site of Levi Holcomb, in the Burnett Corners Cemetery, at 2 p.m.
Aaron Krebs, WISSAR 1st vice president and secretary, said he believes the dedication ceremonies should take around 45 minutes each.
He said this will be the last year that the group does the ceremonies, as they will have finished dedicating the grave markers at all 41 of the graves of Revolutionary War veterans buried in Wisconsin.
Krebs said that since Wisconsin wasn’t a state until 1848, the veterans would have settled in the area when it was still a territory.
“It seems a bit odd that we would have 41 of these people that fought in the revolution buried here,” Krebs said.
He said East Coast states like Massachusets and Virginia have thousands of Revolutionary War graves.
Debra Woldvogel, who has been assisting with the Burnett ceremony planning, said the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution has found over 100,000 graves, and only 41 of them are located in Wisconsin.
“It’s pretty rare,” Woldvogel said. “I would imagine most of the people were either killed in the war or stayed on the East Coast. This gentleman [Levi Holcomb] was from Connecticut and ended up moving eventually to Wisconsin.”
Holcomb was born in 1763 in Granby, Conn. He was 16 or 17 when he enlisted as a substitute for his brother. He served for two months at Stratford in Connecticut. In 1781, he enlisted again as a substitute for his other brother, this time for six months guarding British prisoners. He enlisted for a final time after his six months were up, spending 13 months stationed in Stratford, Conn. After the war he moved to New York, then Pennsylvania, before moving to Wisconsin Territory with his daughter and son-in-law. He died in Dodge County in 1854.
Noyes was born in Connecticut in 1764 and grew up in Vermont. At age 17 he enlisted for nine months in Vermont. After the war he moved to New York and spent 50 years with his childhood friend, Nancy. They raised nine children and when she died in 1845, he moved to Wisconsin Territory with his son. He died in 1850.
For more information, visit www.wissar.org.
