Community Corner

Visit Norwalk's Civil War Veterans & Hear Their Stories

Local historians Madeleine and Ed Eckert will conduct a "tour," talking about some of the Civil War veterans buried at Riverside Cemetery, preceded by a brief ceremony with re-enactors and followed by an ice cream social, all starting at 2 p.m.

At 2 p.m. Saturday, go to for the nearest thing you'll probably ever get to having Civil War veterans rise from their graves to talk about the history they made.

Norwalk had Civil War veterans in nearly all the major battles of the War Between the States. After the war, veterans who spent the rest of their lives in Norwalk, either as natives or who moved into town, were often buried in the veterans plot at Riverside Cemetery, which was founded in 1886. There are 46 veterans interred in the plot.

On Saturday, local historians Madeleine and Ed Eckert of Norwalk will conduct a "cemetery tour" of the veterans plot. The event starts with a brief ceremony involving Civil War re-enactors in full regalia of the Sixth Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. After the tour, which should involve a lot more talking than walking and last a maximum of about an hour, an ice cream social will be held at a cemetery administration building.

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Madeleine Eckert said she would focus on only eight to 10 of the veterans with more interesting stories, among them:

  • A 16-year-old who enlisted wanting to see action, but who joined a regiment that ended up guarding prisoners of war at the Rock Island prison in Illinois.
  • A soldier who was captured at Gettysburg; another, 19 years old, who was mortally wounded there.
  • A native of England who had been jailed for "offensive cursing" in Bridgeport in 1860 and went on to join three different regiments during the war.
  • Two African American sailors.

These were among an estimated 800 to 1,000 soldiers from Norwalk who were in the war, Ed Eckert said. Blaikie Hines, in his 2002 book, Civil War Volunteer Sons of Connecticut, states that there were 750 men later "credited" to Norwalk by authorities (who kept such records partly to keep track of eligibility for widows and orphans of veterans). But Eckert said he's more confident in the estimation of an earlier, nearly contemporary source.

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The total population of Norwalk in 1860 was 7,582, so somewhere around 10 or even 13 percent of the population was at one point enlisted in the armed services.

Seven of the men buried at the site are in unmarked graves, and another 39 have their own tombstones. This is odd, Madeleine said, because the Grand Army of the Republic chapter in Norwalk arranged to have government-provided tombstones for indigent soldiers. Six of those buried in the cemetery had been residents at the Fitch Home for soldiers that once stood in the Noroton Heights section of Darien, and three of them died at the Fitch Home.

Along with the "tour" conducted by Madeleine, Ed Eckert will give a brief talk about Norwalk in the Civil War.

A postcard-sized notice for the event shows a picture of a Civil War statue that once stood at the veterans plot. Nicknamed "Chester," it was destroyed by vandals several decades ago, and pieces of it are on display at the Norwalk Historical Society's complex. The society is hoping to raise funds to restore the statue.

In 1889, the statue had been placed there. It was dedicated that year, on Memorial Day.

Editor's note: For coverage of this event, see


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