‘Unknown’ Civil War soldier was from Dixon
ATLANTA – Pvt. Mark Carr was 19 when he enlisted in the Army in 1861. It is likely that his family in Illinois never knew what happened to the young Union soldier who was deployed to the South to fight in the Civil War and later declared missing in action.
As it turns out, he died June 27, 1864, charging the enemy during the Cheatham Hill attack at what is now the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park outside Atlanta. He is buried in a grave that, for more than 70 years, was marked “Unknown U.S. Soldier.”
Last month, his story was unearthed.
Brad Quinlin, a volunteer historian at the park, spent 5 years poring over documents from Georgia to Illinois to Washington to learn the identity of the soldier buried in the only remaining grave at the former battleground operated by the National Park Service.
Now, Quinlin is searching for northwest Illinois relatives of Carr, whose body was discovered at the Cheatham Hill site by conservation workers in 1938. Carr is believed to have been killed by enemy gunfire as he approached the Confederate trenches during the battle of Kennesaw Mountain.
“Identifying Mark Carr represents all the soldiers killed on that site,” Quinlin said. “Every person that walks by there will stop for a moment and realize that there were casualties that happened on that site and the significance of Kennesaw Mountain to American history.”
Carr does not have the fame of Civil War heroes with Illinois ties, such as President Abraham Lincoln and Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who went on to become the nation’s 18th president. But the contributions of Illinois soldiers helped preserve America and keep it strong, site officials said.
“The park honors both sides,” Chief Park Ranger Lloyd Morris said. “This was part of the Atlanta Campaign, which had national significance because it led to the Union’s capture of Atlanta, which ensured Abraham Lincoln’s re-election in 1864.”
Born in Indianapolis, Carr moved with his family to rural Dixon. He was a farmer and day laborer before responding to Lincoln’s call for troops. Carr traveled about 40 miles to enlist in Company 1 of the 34th Illinois Infantry – known as the Red River Rifles – on Sept. 7, 1861. He re-enlisted on Dec. 3, 1863.
According to his military service records, Carr was a loyal and committed soldier. He was always present for paid duty roll calls, never taking a day off sick or for personal reasons. When he was called to war, he served his country, as did 260,000 other Illinoisans who volunteered for the Union.
During repairs and enhancements to the battlefield site in 1938, Carr’s remains were found, along with Union buttons and brass from his uniform, at the base of the Confederate assault trenches.
A year later, park officials placed a traditional military veterans headstone at the grave, which is surrounded by a small split-rail fence. Over the years, joggers and tourists who frequent the trails that run through the wooded park have placed American flags and flowers at the grave site.
Other soldiers’ bodies were buried immediately, but Carr’s was overlooked, park officials said. It is possible, historians said, that an artillery shell threw dirt over his body, hiding him from view.
“The day after the battle, they declared a truce because it was June and about 100 degrees outside, and the bodies were stinking,” said Willie Johnson, the historian at Kennesaw Park. “They buried them right there, and after the war, the U.S. government hired people to recover the bodies and move them to the new national cemetery.”
More than 9,000 Union soldiers who died during the Atlanta campaign are buried at the nearby Marietta National Cemetery, which was established in 1866.
According to Quinlin, Carr never was reburied, possibly because he had been declared missing in action and no one was looking for him.
“He didn’t have a pension record, indicating that his mother or wife never filed for his pension,” he said, “Over time, maybe they had held out hope, because he was never reported killed on the battlefield, that he was alive in a prison camp.”
Quinlin learned Carr’s identity through tedious research. Using a collection of Civil War letters from the 34th Illinois regiment archived at what is now the Chicago History Museum, he determined that Carr had reported to duty on June 27 and that five men from his regiment had been killed, but not Carr.
“We started taking all the facts and putting them together like a puzzle,” Quinlin said, “and over a 5-year period, we found that he was the only soldier killed on the morning of June 27, 1864, that we could not find a burial spot for.”
In 1914, the state of Illinois erected a marble monument on a 90-acre tract of land at Kennesaw Mountain. Carr’s body rests in the shadow of the 30-foot-tall Illinois Monument – built as a tribute to the Illinois soldiers who took part in the Cheatham Hill assault.
Reprinted with permission of the Chicago Tribune; copyright Chicago Tribune, all rights reserved.
