John Lynch
~1815 — 1866
Woodlawn Cemetery
Edwardsville, Madison County, Illinois, USA
John Lynch served as a Private in Company A, 39th Regiment, Illinois Infantry. According to his enlistment documents, he was 44 years old and a resident of St. Louis, Missouri when he joined on 31 October 1861. He was mustered out of service on 29 October 1864 when his three year enlistment expired.
Kelly Collins, a descendant of John Lynch, reports that at the time of his discharge from the Army, John Lynch was in ill health and on the advice of the Company doctor he did not immediately return home to Edwardsville, Illinois. He passed away on 28 March 1866 at New Orleans, Louisiana. The cause of death may have been smallpox.
John Lynch was buried in Locust Grove Cemetery at New Orleans. Apparently subsequent burials at this location often disturbed previous interments in a haphazard manner, and multiple burials in the same plot were not uncommon. The cemetery was closed in 1879, covered with two feet of earth and planted with grain and grass. In 1905, one of three schools named after Thomy Lafon was built on the land without the removal of any of the bodies.
More than a century later, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recognized the likelihood that John's remains could not be recovered and honored the family's request that a memorial marker be erected in Woodlawn Cemetery, at Edwardsville, Illinois, where members of John Lynch's family have been buried.
Sources
- Family history shared by Kelly Collins.
- "Appendix A. Taken from the Annual Report to the Board of Health for 1878. By Joseph Holt, M.D., Sanitary Inspector of the Fourth District of New Orleans. Locust Grove Cemetery." The Monthly Review of Medicine and Pharmacy ; Volume 2, Number 5 (May 1879); pages 74-75. PDF copy at Google Books.
- "Address by Dr. Rochester. American Medical Association." Annual Report of the Secretary of the State Board of Health of the State of Michigan ; Volume 7 (1880); pages 41-42. PDF copy at Google Books.
- Creolgen. The Tomy Lafon School; Part One. Posted 12 April 2015.
- Huber, Leonard V. New Orleans Architecture. Volume 3 - The Cemeteries. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 1974; Holt Cemetery, page 60. Page preview at Google Books.
Brief Genealogy
John Lynch's family
John Lynch was born about 1815 in County Cork, Ireland. Details of his birth family are not known at this time.
Sally Ann Lanterman's family
Sally was born in 1826. Details of her birth family are not known at this time.
Lynch - Lanterman family
John Lynch's 1st marriage
Eudoxia Ann Scott's family
Eudoxia was born in February 1832 in Tennessee, USA. Details of her birth family are not known at this time. In January 1851, she was married to Henry Cork in Madison County, Illinois. Details of this marriage are not known at this time.