Even after his body got carted back to North Carolina, then buried in the Confederate section of Oakwood cemetery, he rested under a stone that read simply, "Unknown soldier."

Now Charles Purser has given him a name.

Purser, a 67-year-old retiree from Garner, has spent the past 25 years matching names to graves in the Confederate cemetery he helped rescue from neglect in the early 1980s.

He has already discovered that a Minnesota sharpshooter and Yankee soldier named John Dolson was mistakenly labeled a Confederate and buried -- name misspelled -- in Oakwood among the rebels.

Now with further research, he has uncovered the names of two more soldiers he had not been able to identify: Scruggs, who marched to the Civil War from his home in North Carolina's mountains, and William P. Wallace, a farm boy from Montgomery County.

On Sept. 23, Purser will hold a ceremony to honor and lay accurate headstones for all three.

"It's three American soldiers getting their identity," Purser said. "That's what tickles me."

An Air Force veteran and retired postal carrier living in Garner, Purser has personally ordered each headstone for Confederates buried in Oakwood.

When he first saw the cemetery, it was choked with weeds and offered no hint of the soldiers' origins.

Thousands of hours scrutinizing hospital logs, regimental rosters and cemetery records have brought him to this point: for the North Carolinians who fell at Gettysburg, he has names for all but five of those buried at Oakwood, save 14 unknowns in a mass grave.

His work with these two new unknowns grew out of work that started in December when a New Yorker and fellow Gettysburg obsessive called to say his own research showed a Yankee buried in Oakwood.

Purser and Glen Hayes compared notes and decided that John O. Dobson from North Carolina didn't exist, but through a century-old error, John O. Dolson of Minnesota had been shipped to Raleigh in his place.

This spring, when Purser sent his data to the National Park Service for double-checking, he sent along the names of seven Oakwood unknowns as a wild stab.

Ranger and historian John Heiser wrote back with data from corps hospitals that sprang up after the battle.

Purser didn't even know those records existed.

It's a common request, Heiser said. He gets two such queries a month. "Usually it's someone who is looking for an ancestor," he said. "They come across a name in an old Bible."

Through Heiser's records, Purser was able to match up incomplete, partially legible records he had in Raleigh.

The name "J.A. Wallace, NC" became Pvt. William P. Wallace, Company C, 23rd N.C. Infantry."

The name "Private J. Scruggs" became Private Drury Scruggs, Company D, 16th North Carolina Infantry.

Purser figures the "J" in the incorrect name is actually part of a "D" for Drury, worn away by time and misread.

With Scruggs and Wallace named, Purser imagines the names of the remaining unknowns on a roster he doesn't even know exists yet, waiting to be found.