Black Civil War vet's new headstone in Uniondale cemetery tells 'the American story'

Greened by time and the elements, a Civil War Army soldier, immortalized in bronze at Greenfield Cemetery in Uniondale, has for decades anchored a 25-foot-high monument to the people buried there who fought to end slavery and save the Union, including one battlefield vet who had far more to lose than most.

Well over a century after he died in Freeport, Henderson  McCla in's headstone at the historic Nassau Road cemetery had fallen into disrepair. The cracked, darkened, illegible ruin has long been unsuitable to recognize a man born into slavery, grew up to fight the Confederacy; was shot while serving in the 90th New York Infantry as a cook, got out a free man and eventually lived the life of a Long Island farmer.

Out with the old

Greenlawn native and Riverdale resident Linda Powell, McClain’s great-great-granddaughter, grew up hearing the history of her formerly enslaved ancestor and his service in the Civil War. But she never knew where he was interred until her husband, a genealogy buff researching both their lineages, received a message through Ancestry.com from a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, historic preservation group's Baldwin chapter detailing plans to give McClain's grave site a new stone marker.

For the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, installing the headstone, and doing the homework to make sure the newly carved inscription was accurate, are part of their overall mission of making sure the memory of Civil War soldiers never fades. For Powell, the white-and-gray-specked headstone honors McClain and so many generations of others across 400 years.

His is truly "the American story," she said.

"I don’t really think of Henderson McClain as being mine," Powell told Newsday. "All of these people who survived just coming across that Atlantic Ocean in such horrible conditions, we’re all the same. We’re survivors. We’re stolen people, and we survived."

Members of the Civil War group's Moses A. Baldwin Camp No. 544 in Baldwin did the research on a volunteer basis, looking up the graves of Union veterans, and installing new grave markers for McClain and eight fellow Civil War soldiers.

McClain's marker reads: 

"HENDERSON MCCLAIN

COOK CO D 90 NY INFANTRY

Civil War

1835   JUNE 3, 1910"

"It’s just an amazing feeling to be able to do this," said Wayne Haddock, the Baldwin chapter's headstone coordinator. "Once the stone is put in place and there’s an American Flag there, he will not be forgotten. That’s so important these days for us all to remember the sacrifices that our ancestors made throughout our country’s history."

In June, the new grave markers were unveiled at a ceremony attended by Powell and her family. The Sons' Baldwin chapter also hosted two ceremonies last month, unveiling a new headstone at Commack United Methodist Church Cemetery and another at Commack Cemetery. Their next dedication is scheduled for Oct. 4 at Saint Ann's Episcopal Cemetery in Sayville.

Haddock said he believes he has located all the Union veterans buried in Greenfield whose headstones are either illegible, broken or nonexistent. Next year, the Baldwin group will likely complete their work in Greenfield and host a ceremony unveiling new stones for another 15 Union veterans.

But there's plenty more work to do, said Dennis Duffy, secretary of the Baldwin Camp. A nationwide database for the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War counts about 800,000 soldiers and sailors whose burial sites are unknown, around 38% of the 2.1 million who served.

"We're trying to identify — which is impossible — the final resting place of everyone who served," Duffy said of the organization's national goal. "Sometimes we're only going to be able to say a battlefield because a lot of these guys were blown to bits and buried on the battlefield. Their bodies were never brought home. Or by the time the battlefields were cleared of the bodies, whatever identification had been scrawled on a piece of wood, two or three years later, you can no longer read it. So there were thousands and thousands of soldiers who were buried as unknowns in national cemeteries, which sprouted up near the major battlefields, like Gettysburg would be a prime example."

The organization's database includes around 1,100 Union vets in Suffolk and another 500 in Nassau, but Duffy said he believes the true number of Union service members interred on Long Island could be about 3,000, including those who left for battle and returned home as well as others from afar who lived out their days here, like McClain.

Other Civil War veterans who lived on Long Island before the war are buried elsewhere in the nation and around the world.

“America has been moving west since before the founding of the United States,” Duffy said. “We have in the database around 101,000 soldiers who served in New York units; 60% of them are buried in New York, 40% are buried elsewhere.”

Searching through history

The process of identifying the unmarked graves of Civil War veterans in New York begins by combing through the state's Civil War military units and whatever interment records are available through each cemetery.

Once the Sons determine where a Union soldier is interred, they must next prove the person served honorably.

"I go through the research on the veteran to get his military documents, his background, obituaries, birth and death documents," Haddock said of the next steps. "Then I work together with the cemetery or the town historian to put together a package so I can submit it to the VA to put in the application to order a stone."

The federal Department of Veterans Affairs covers the costs of manufacturing the Union veteran’s headstone and shipping it to the cemetery, Haddock said. Then it’s up to the Sons to put it in the right spot. They also try to hunt down descendants of the veterans for whom they’ve acquired a new marker, but it is rare they will be found and attend an unveiling. 

After learning of her great-great-grandfather’s grave site, Powell said she tried to find out more about his life through the library in Freeport, where he died in 1910. She learned that the man who served as a cook in the 90th New York Infantry from 1863 to 1866 survived a gunshot wound during the war, Remnants of the bullet remained in McClain's chest until his death.

While it is not clear how or why or exactly when he ventured north from his birthplace in Louisiana, she learned McClain arrived in East Rockaway, where he worked on a farm and married Mary Jane Jarvis, a member of one of the first Black families in Freeport, with whom he had three daughters.

Seeing her ancestor’s name carved into stone for the first time was "quite overwhelming," Powell said.

"I am related to someone, who in my opinion, is the strongest of strong," she told Newsday. "I can do anything I need to do, and so can my son, and so can my husband, and so can all of us as African Americans. For us, it’s always been an ugly time. ... And I know that having been related to someone like this, I can get through this."