Past comes alive as researcher Juntunen finds Civil War ties

Judy Juntunen, former research librarian for the Benton County Historical Museum, appreciates just how much her research owes to the women of the Winema Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. For decades, the county's only resource for cemetery inventories was a survey compiled by DAR members in 1947-48, led by Harriet Moore, former archivist for Oregon State College, now Oregon State University.

"It was not an easy job," Juntunen told a group of modern DAR members at their monthly meeting Monday. "Many of the older (cemeteries) were all but abandoned."

Juntunen, who had the chance to work with Moore during her last years, couldn't say enough about Moore's work in preserving local history.

"Harriet Moore is a Benton County star," she said. "Through her efforts much county history was preserved."

The work that Moore and other DAR women completed on the original cemetery survey was crucial. It was valuable both to a 1980s survey done by the Benton County Genealogical Society and to a more recent project that Juntunen has been working on for several years - the recognition and restoration of graves of Civil War veterans in Crystal Lake Cemetery.

Juntunen first became involved in searching out the graves after Randy Fletcher, a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, was trying to find the grave of Gen. Thomas Thorp. It was rumored that Thorp was buried at Crystal Lake.

Thorp enlisted as a Union soldier from New York at the beginning of the war in 1861 and rose steadily through the ranks. He escaped from Confederate imprisonment, and he was promoted in 1864 to the rank of Brigadier General. Thorp moved to Corvallis in 1891. When he died in 1915 at age 78, his dear friend Dr. J.R.N. Bell presided over his funeral at the Presbyterian church. The two men had formed a friendship before they realized that they'd fought on opposite sides during the Battle of Cedar Creek.

Fascinated by Thorp's story and the historical "lost and found" of old cemeteries, Juntunen instantly was intrigued.

"I'm always a little concerned, telling people how much I like old cemeteries," she said. Having grown up next to the Zion Lutheran Cemetery, she spent many of her childhood days reading gravestones.

There was no gravestone for Thorp, but Juntunen began poring through old records. She finally found Thorp's grave in an area of the cemetery dedicated to the Grand Army of the Republic. She further discovered that six other Union soldiers and one Confederate soldiers also had been buried without markers.

Fletcher's organization helped set new grave markers at the site, as well as clean and restore the gravestones of other Civil War veterans around the cemetery. The research eventually led to Juntunen identifying 67 such veterans in Crystal Lake. Originally, only 48 were known.

In a departure from the usual, the Civil War veterans are not segregated into areas for Confederate and federal; they are buried next to each other.

In addition to this unusual accord, Juntunen stumbled upon this bit of history: Two of Corvallis' original African-American settlers, Eliza Gorman and her mother, Hannah, did not rest in peace. In 1908, their graves were moved to make way for a war memorial.

"It's ironic to have the only two African-American women moved - in order to place a statue for the Civil War Memorial," Juntunen said.