Civil War, WWI vets finally get gravestones at Sayville cemetery

Beneath the grass at St. Ann's Cemetery in Sayville, the graves of several soldiers have long sat unmarked.

Over a period of months, local volunteer Wayne Haddock cross-referenced military service records, obituaries, family records and cemetery records to identify three Civil War and two World War I veterans buried at St. Ann's and worked with cemetery manager Tim Laffin to obtain headstones for them.  

On Saturday, the Moses A. Baldwin Camp #544 of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War met at the cemetery to unveil and dedicate granite headstones to Civil War veterans Daniel Murdoch, Charles H. Ressler and John R. Strickland, and World War I veterans George A. Rogerson and Benjamin F. Woodward.

"It is complicated, because you have to make sure that you're 100% correct with your records — that their service records match up with their pension documents, and do the cemetery records match up with an obituary, the family records," said Haddock, of Greenlawn.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides the headstones, requires absolute proof of the veteran's identity, Haddock said.

Saturday's event honored the SUVCW's most recent set of grave site verifications, but represents only a fraction of similar work, according to Moses A. Baldwin Camp Secretary and Graves Registration Officer Dennis Duffy, of Lynbrook. The organization has obtained headstones for more than 80 unmarked graves over the past five years, Duffy said.

"We're primarily looking for Civil War veterans, but, sometimes we find veterans of other wars — War of 1812, World War I," Duffy said in a phone interview. "And rather than pass them by, if we think we can get a stone from the VA for them, we do it."

Attendees also honored Pvt. Thomas Griffin, who Duffy said was the last Union veteran buried in Suffolk County.

"He is a legend in the Griffin family, remembered for his sweetness, but also for his toughness when challenged," said his great-great-granddaughter, Pamela Griffin Hansen, to an audience of a few dozen.

The ceremony included the performance of full military honors, with rifle detail by Company K 67th NY Historical Association.

"This is something we love to do," said Scott McKendrick, a Navy veteran from Bayport and member of Company K.

McKendrick and those who stood beside him performed a three-volley salute. Having loaded their rifles with black powder, the men aimed and fired to the left oblique.

During the ceremony, Haddock read short biographies of those whose graves are now marked. Murdoch, he said, was a Center Moriches native who once traveled with the Barnum & Bailey Circus; Strickland, born in Coxsackie in 1828, worked as a painter before the Civil War began.

"Now, every Memorial Day, they'll have a flag placed by them, and people will be able to read their stone and maybe possibly learn about their history," Haddock said.