Unearthing the past

Civil War soldier's life remains closed book despite digging

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The story has been written about many times.

The blue and the gray grave site in Woodlawn Cemetery on the border of North Las Vegas and Las Vegas -- two men, separated by war in the 1860s, united by friendship in the early 20th century, brought together for eternity by death. Possibly the only grave in the country with a Confederate and Yankee lying side by side.

Much is known about the Union veteran William B. Keith. His photograph is available on the Internet home page of William B. Keith Camp 12 of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. His military papers exist.

But as for Joseph M. Graham of Virginia, much less is known. And information obtained from several sources during the past month has, if anything, thrown what little was known about him into question.

An author once said that it seems as if everyone who fought in the Civil War wrote about it, and many wrote about it exceedingly well.

But much remains vague, especially on the Confederate side. Many records were destroyed or lost toward the end of the war in 1865. Where Keith seems virtually an open book, Graham is largely an enigma.

Keith enlisted in September 1861 and became a private in Company K, 12th Iowa Regiment. It was a regiment that saw its share of war and then some. The new enlistee was 21 years old, stood 5-foot-8, had a light complexion and blue eyes.

In February 1862, the unit plunged right in and was among those that stormed Fort Donelson along the Kentucky-Tennessee border. An entire Confederate army surrendered, the first of three to be captured by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

Less than two months later, the 12th Iowa fought at Shiloh, the war's greatest battle to that time. Surrounded in a site later termed the Hornet's Nest for the desperate defense mounted by Union troops, the 12th eventually was forced to surrender. Keith was a prisoner-of-war.

He was held near Montgomery, Ala., then at the notorious Libby Prison in Richmond, Va., before being exchanged and paroled in October 1862. His regiment, after he rejoined it, took part in the Vicksburg campaign and siege, which reached its climax with Grant's accepting another Confederate army's surrender in early July 1863.

Keith could have gone home before the end of the year, his two-year enlistment fulfilled, but he decided to stick it out and, according to records supplied by Len Becker, a member of the local Sons of Union Veterans camp, he re-enlisted for three years at Chewalla, Tenn., on Christmas Day.

By early July, his regiment was in tough Gen. Joseph Mower's division as Gen. A.J. "Sooey" Smith led an expedition of 14,000 men into northeastern Mississippi to fight Confederates led by S.D. Lee and the famed cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not many Union commanders ever beat Forrest, but Smith did. A short regimental history, whose author is unknown, details the 12th Iowa's experience near Tupelo, Miss., July 12-14, 1864.

Rebel cavalry, finding the regiment guarding a wagon train, thought Keith's regiment would be easy pickings. "Never," wrote the anonymous historian, "were men more mistaken. The regiment stood like a wall, from which the charge of the troopers rebounded as though springing from a consuming conflagration." Keith's unit received a commendation from Smith and lost 64 men, killed, wounded and missing.

Among them was Keith, wounded severely in his right thigh on the final day of combat.

Apparently due to the severity of his wound, Keith was not discharged from the army until February 1866, or nearly a year after the Civil War ended.

At some point, Becker related, Keith's wife back in Iowa lost touch with her husband and eventually assumed he died, either on the battlefield or perhaps in a Rebel prison. As a young woman, who didn't want the lonely life of a widow, she re-married. Her new husband was Keith's brother, and one may imagine the scene when Keith showed up, limping perhaps but otherwise hale and hearty, home from the war.

Keith didn't let any grass grow either, said Becker, and shortly found a new wife for himself. As Becker put it, "It sounds like 'Tobacco Road.' "

Years later, in 1911, as Las Vegas was becoming Las Vegas, Keith showed up here in the valley to spend his remaining days. He also befriended Joseph M. Graham, the ex-Confederate.

As Keith's obituary in the Dec. 18, 1920, Las Vegas Age put it, the friendship endured until 1917, when Graham died of pneumonia.

Keith bought a lot in the cemetery and had Graham buried in it. He even had Graham's late wife's ashes shipped west from Virginia.

But who exactly was Graham? His grave marker says merely that he was born Oct. 20, 1838, died here on April 2, 1917, and served in Caldwell's Battalion, Virginia Cavalry. So far, so good.

His obituary, in the April 4, 1917, edition of the Las Vegas Age, says he was survived by a son here, J.W. Graham, and a daughter, Mrs. G.B. Burtner, in San Francisco. He had moved to Las Vegas, date unknown, from Buena Vista, Colo.

Oddly, however, the obituary makes no mention of Civil War service.

A Web site offering brief information on Civil War servicemen unveils the mystery of J.M. Graham's actual identity.

Under the name Joseph M. Graham, the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System reports he served in Graham's Company, Caldwell's Battalion, as a private. It also says his "alternate name" was James M. Graham.

Under James M. Graham, the same site lists a sergeant who served with the 16th Virginia Cavalry Regiment, and whose alternate name was Joseph M. Graham.

Graham's Company of Caldwell's Battalion became, in January 1863, Company I of the 16th Virginia Cavalry.

On the surface, it would appear that Joseph M. and James M. are the same fellow, and that upon formation of the regular cavalry unit, he was promoted from private to sergeant.

But recent research conducted by members of the Virginia chapter of Sons of Confederate Veterans has thrown a wrench into the works.

Graham's company in the 16th Virginia Cavalry was commanded by a William Leander Graham, and a roster compiled in 2002 by Karen Moman shows five Grahams in service: the company commander; Samuel S. Graham, Robert Graham, Luke Graham and James M. Graham. The record gives no indication of whether, or how, they may have been related.

No Joseph M. Graham is listed. James M. Graham was 41 in 1860 when, according to his obituary and grave marker, Joseph M. Graham would have been only 22.

Charles Walker III of Virginia and Woodrow Simmons of West Virginia discovered that a James M. Graham enlisted in Caldwell's Battalion in Tazewell County, Virginia, in early October 1862, or three months before it was absorbed into the 16th Virginia Cavalry. His military record is slim: absent on horse detail, Oct. 31, 1864, then absent, sick, and "bounty due" -- a reward possibly for turning in a deserter or signing up a new recruit -- on Dec. 31, 1864, and eventually paroled in June 1865 after Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

The 16th had a good record, including service at Gettysburg.

When the war ended, James M. Graham was 46 years old, 5-foot-8, with hazel eyes, a florid complexion and gray hair.

Walker discovered another record that places James M. Graham in Buckhannon County, Va., in 1880, 61 years old, married to a Martha L. Graham, 38. "He writes a comment that he has a broken leg," said Walker. According to Jim Pierce, of Morganton, N.C., Graham was in Grundy, Va, in 1900.

Pierce found a later reference to Graham's wife, saying she had moved in with her sister in 1910.

"It is my opinion that we've been tracing the wrong James M. Graham," Pierce said. "I don't think an 80-plus-year-old man would pack up and leave his wife and longtime home in Virginia to go to Nevada."

Is it possible that the Graham buried in Woodlawn, born in 1838, may be the same Graham who was 43 when he served with the 16th Virginia Cavalry in 1863? How could that be?

Adding to the mystery, another Virginia researcher, Glen Gallagher, tossed another stick onto the fire: "I took a quick look at the 1910 census and found a Joseph M. Graham living in Nye County (Nevada). He was born in Virginia, age 73 in 1910, and had been married for 49 years to a woman named Annie. They had two children, both still living in 1910." But there was no hint of a Civil War record.

Neither Graham's nor Keith's obituary specify when Graham arrived in Las Vegas, although there may be an implication in Keith's that Graham was already here in 1911.

Then Pierce, finding the name of Graham's son, turned up yet another possibility.

In his words, "James Graham of Slab Fork, W.Va., whose (census) records were originally listed as being in Wyoming County, Va., is most likely, of all the James Grahams, to be the one buried in Nevada. His wife was named Sarah. He had a son named James W. Graham among numerous other children." But again, no direct evidence of this Graham's service in the war, much less with a specific unit.

"After 1880, the trail of records runs cold," Pierce added.

There is one further possibility that Joseph M. and James M. could have been the same man.

When he enlisted in October 1862, James M. Graham was above the upper age limit established by the Confederacy for recruits.

It is at least conceivable that he deliberately lessened his age so he could become a cavalryman, and if one or more of the "other" Grahams were relatives -- especially the company commander, William Leander Graham -- something of a conspiracy of silence might have prevailed. It is at least possible that Graham enjoyed being younger than he really was and maintained the new birth date.

Still, a 20-year age difference is considerable, and it would mean that Graham was actually 98 when he died.

So it may be that Joseph Moore Graham's military career will never be detailed, or perhaps he is actually the James M. Graham who stuck it out to the war's end and surrendered with his regiment at Appomattox.

Becker provided one last, ironic afterthought to the whole story of Graham and Keith.

Not many years ago, he contacted one of Keith's descendants in Iowa, telling her a grave marker was available if she thought the family would like to mount it in the appropriate cemetery.

But the bitterness engendered by Keith's wife's marriage to his brother apparently still remains.

"She wrote that there was a lot of animosity," Becker said, "and they were not interested."

Sometimes the memories just don't fade.