John Lynch
Woodlawn Cemetery
Edwardsville, Illinois, USA
John Lynch served as a Private in Company A, 39th Regiment, Illinois Infantry. He was age 44 and a resident of St. Louis, Missouri when he joined on 31 October 1861. He was mustered out on 29 October 1864 when his three year enlistment expired.
Kelly Collins, a descendant of John's, 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, Thomy Lafon School 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.
Brief Genealogy
Lynch - Lanterman family
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