10/01/2026
A Community Comes Together
This past Monday night, a gathering of like-minded individuals came together at our Lakeview Cemetery to honor the veterans of the War Between the States.
Throughout the past year, members of the Nashville, Michigan Historical Society have been conducting a search to find the total number of Civil War Veterans in our cemetery. There were many of the old GAR, (Grand Army of the Republic), flag holders and we wondered if there might be more that have disappeared or never placed throughout the years.
Some of these holders have been marking these graves for as many as 145 years, making them an amazing remnant of long ago. Through old copies of the Nashville News obituaries, Ancestry.com, and Find a Grave, along with Susan Hinckley columns, we found that there were more than 50 other veterans that were not marked.
We mapped the burials and considered how to fund new flag holders. Because many existing holders were bent, rusted, and deteriorating, we decided every veteran’s grave should receive the same treatment. These men fought valiantly to preserve the Union and reunite the country.
Each grave has a story and there are too many to tell….many of the stories were buried years ago. But these deaths mark over 70 years of veteran’s deaths. From Lot Fuller Barnes, who died in 1863 at age 22, to 90-year-old Myron Brooks who passed in 1936, there are over seven decades of internments throughout the passage of time. Four of the veterans peacefully lay within our 1920 mausoleum.
There are soldiers who signed up in ten different states. Some were infantry, cavalry, artillery and mechanics and engineers. A few were from an elite group of Missouri men known as “Merril’s Horse” brigade. For many years, one of Nashville’s earliest doctors was William Howie Young, a Canadian by birth, who signed up for the Union, and became a field surgeon. Once back in the civilian arena, he received more schooling and served our village for his first medical practice and stayed until his death in 1901. Henry Raymond, who lived on Hager Road before Nashville was formed, joined up at Grand Rapids as a 40-year-old in 1864 and died in Alabama. His remains never returned, but his family erected a grave marker for him, (known as a Cenotaph.)
The stories go on in this ground we call Lakeview; we can find brothers who served together, Fathers and Sons, and even extensions of family members such as cousins and other people related to each other. In all, it is an impressive cross-section of our early village that we can be proud of.
That brought us to learn of the Blood Family Grant administered through the Barry Community Foundation. This grant was created to honor the pioneering and agricultural spirit of Barry County. Since these veterans were true pioneers of our area and the predominance of them were most certainly farmers of the land, we applied for the grant. We were very pleased to learn that our labors would be rewarded.
With the funding from the grant, we were able to purchase the 120 flag holders needed to mark each veterans’ grave and place American flags for everyone to see that our little community was a home to many who served during the 1861 – 1865 conflict.
Monday night a community gathered 161 years after the war’s end, in a united purpose: to pay homage to these pioneers and veterans. It was a pleasing sight to have over 20 people assembled for this purpose. Most were from our community, but we also had a few from outside of Nashville. Two of the group were members of the Sons of the Union Volunteers of the Civil War, based out of Sunfield, some came from Hastings, Bellevue and Burlington, Michigan.
We had a brief ceremony with Commander of our local Thornapple Post 8260, Jeremy Monasmith, reminding us of sacrifice and valor, and Kermit Douse of the Nashville, Michigan Historical Society, explaining the process of finding these graves and how we would go about putting the flag holders in the ground. They both thanked the Barry Community Foundation and the awarding of the Blood Family Grant for helping in his worthy endeavor.
