New marker corrects grave error

Union soldier had been buried as Confederate

RALEIGH -- Seven members of the 6th North Carolina Infantry's Cedar Fork Rifles stood at attention in the early morning sun Saturday, their long-barreled Enfields ramrodded with black powder as they prepared to honor the grave of a Union soldier at Oakwood Cemetery.

A new tombstone bearing the name of Pvt. Jacob Pfeiffer of New York marked the grave. The old stone, with the name of the Confederate soldier mistakenly thought to be buried here, had been uprooted and was leaning against a magnolia tree.

About a dozen people -- mostly Civil War heritage buffs -- gathered to rededicate the Union soldier's unlikely resting place. No one from New York or the young man's family attended the brief ceremony.

Union Cpl. Tim Morton, 44, of Raleigh gave the commands to his fellow "soldiers" -- several in Confederate gray, others in Union blue -- before they raised their rifles. A crack of triggers and explosion of gunfire was followed by taps played on a battered bugle by Confederate soldier Woody Ragan, 64, of Garner.

John Roderick, 63, of Angier, wearing the Union's wool, navy-blue jacket and light blue pants, carried the honor guard flag. He nodded toward the new tombstone at the end of the ceremony.

"That soldier would be proud," Roderick said.

Pvt. Jacob Pfeiffer, the son of German immigrants who grew up on a farm in east Manhattan, was 21 when he died after being wounded in the left hip in combat at Devil's Den during the Battle of Gettysburg.

For more than a century, Pfeiffer -- a member of Company E, 40th New York, Mozart Regiment -- was thought to be a North Carolina soldier, until Civil War buff Charles Purser of Raleigh confirmed his identity. The Confederate stone over Pfeiffer's grave carried the name of Pvt. George Piper. It's not known where Piper's body is buried.

Pfeiffer's remains were among those of 137 men moved from Gettysburg to the Confederate section of the Oakwood Cemetery at the behest of the Raleigh Ladies Memorial Association in 1871.

"They were supposedly all from North Carolina," Purser said. "But two were from Virginia, one was from South Carolina and, of course, two Union soldiers were found this past year."

Purser found the grave of Union Pvt. John P. Olson of Minnesota last year. Olson was honored with an event similar to Saturday's ceremony.

"We are here to honor American soldiers, regardless of which side they were on," Purser said.

The story of how Pfeiffer was buried as a Confederate soldier began in July 1863 in Gettysburg, where about 15,500 North Carolina men were among the 60,000 to 75,000 Confederate troops who marched into battle with Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Pfeiffer was wounded during a three-day clash that left 21,000 soldiers from both sides wounded or dead on the battlefield.

Pfeiffer was wounded July 2. He spent two weeks in a battlefield hospital and was then moved to a mass tent hospital east of Gettysburg, where he died three weeks later.

Soldiers from both sides were buried side by side -- Union and Confederate -- in the order that they died at the hospital, Purser said. Pfeiffer was somehow misidentified as a Confederate and later shipped to Raleigh.

Purser is the author of a book about the Confederate section of the cemetery, "A Story Behind Every Stone." He credits the Internet, and a New York historian with expertise on North Carolina's Civil War soldiers, with helping him confirm Pfeiffer's identity.

"It's such a wealth of information," Purser said about the Internet. "Ten years ago I couldn't have found him."