A Civil War veteran family’s search led them to Sequim. While the exact location of his remains are unclear, his family left with some answers — along with a unique, 100-plus-year-old keepsake.

Moore G. Waldron, listed as a private in the 102nd Regiment of the Illinois Infantry (Union) by the National Park Service and other war records, moved with his family from Illinois to Sequim in 1905 and died in 1908. He was buried at Sequim Prairie Cemetery, Sequim’s first cemetery, now the site of Pioneer Memorial Park.

Laura Singer of the Sequim Prairie Garden Club, the organization that takes care of park and clubhouse maintenance and improvements, notes the cemetery was established in about 1885 on four acres sold to Clallam County by John Bell (of Bell Hill fame).

According to the Washington Interment Association, Sequim Prairie Cemetery had no burials past 1940. Problems with flooding in the area forced the cemetery’s closure in about 1910, Singer says, and cemetery officials began contacting families encouraging them to move remains and/or gravestones to other new cemeteries in the area — including Sequim View Cemetery off of Sequim-Dungeness Way and Dungeness Cemetery in Dungeness.

Some families chose to take headstones to farms and family plots in Sequim and Port Angeles, Singer says.

Garden club officials say the cemetery closed in 1920 and the property was abandoned until the club took on the park as a project in 1951.

What garden club officials found spread across those four acres were a number of gravestones, many of them in disrepair, leading to a second push to contact families for possible reburial.

The remaining unclaimed gravestones, including those in broken pieces, were moved in the 1980s to an area now fenced and locked. It was an effort to preserve some history while trying to prevent vandalism; U.S. GenWeb Archives notes that some of the gravestones were vandalized in 1982.

Inside the fence, headstones were placed on a cement base — except for some markers that lay there in pieces.

The headstones got moved, Singer says, but the remains, well, they may remain.

In the early 1950s, garden club officials contacted DeEtta Sprague, Waldron’s granddaughter. According to Singer, Sprague told them the family “wished the stone put in the Legion plot at the other cemetery,” and that garden club notes indicate “the American Legion is going to move it up there.”

Garden club members, however, could find no records or gravestone for Waldron at Sequim View Cemetery, Singer says.

In about May of 2016, Sandy England of Gig Harbor — a great-great grandaughter of Moore Waldron — mentioned she and her father wanted to see some of their family’s homesteads in Kansas and Nebraska on their way back to Washington. Cheryl England, Sandy’s daughter-in-law, says that she started helping the family do some research for that trip.

“One thing led to another and I found myself deep in research for membership into the Daughters of the American Revolution,” Cheryl England said. “Moore was one of the family members that caught my eye and we struggled to find any information on where he was buried.”

The family discovered Waldron’s Sequim connection via the U.S. GenWeb Archives website.

England then contacted the Sequim Prairie Garden Club about Waldron’s gravestone and whereabouts.

Fighting to preserve the Union

Not much is known about Moore G. Waldron besides what can be culled from family members’ research and official war records.

According to the Office of the Illinois Secretary of State, Waldron joined the Union Army in Oneida in Knox County, Ill., on Aug. 6, 1862. A brick mason by trade, he was married at the time, was 6 feet tall and had blue eyes, brown hair and had a “light” complexion.

He joined for a three-year stint with the Illinois 102nd, but was discharged on Feb. 22, 1863, with a disability.

During his stint, the Illinois 102nd marched in pursuit of Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg during the Confederate Heartland Offensive, or Kentucky Campaign, in early October 1862.

England’s family research indicates that when Waldron’s oldest son Frank got married, he and the family moved from Illinois to Nebraska and then Kansas, where Waldron’s wife Mary died. The couple had five children together.

Waldron returned to Illinois, remarried and then moved the family to Sequim in 1905, dying three years later. (According to Army records, he was 28 when he was discharged from the service, making him 72 or 73 at his death.)

In 1910, Frank Waldron and immediate family moved to Pierce County and he died in 1945, six years before the Sequim Prairie Garden Club took on the park project.

Bringing the family history home

Last summer, Moore Waldron’s family was able to piece together — quite literally — some of the family history pieces. Within the fenced area at Pioneer Memorial Park, family members didn’t find a complete headstone, but were able to piece Waldron’s marker together from piles of broken stone that park officials had moved there years earlier.

Waldron’s descendants asked for permission from the City of Sequim, owners of the park land, to take possession of the original gravestone and replace it with a new one.

Within a few short weeks, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Memorial Programs Service had paid for a new gravestone and sent it to City of Sequim’s Public Works Department.

In late December of 2016, Waldron’s new gravestone was installed and this January family members joined City of Sequim and Sequim Prairie Garden Club officials at the park to bring Waldron’s marker home.

Cheryl England noted, “At this point, we still have the pieces and are trying to figure out how we can frame or cast them with a small inscription into something that can be used as a book end, and then given to family members.”

But the pieces are just part of their family history that came alive finding more about Moore and others.

“Our family took a trip to Gettysburg and Fredricksburg and Manassas last fall and showed our school-aged children the places and talked about the sacrifices made by so many men,” Cheryl England said. “It was an amazing opportunity, made even sweeter because we could connect our own family to the Civil War.

“For our family, Moore was lost to history. That generation and his stories didn’t make it through the family line. I cannot tell you how exciting it has been to ‘discover’ him again with his war record and photographs.”