Rising above Nelson Circle is a monument dedicated to the memory of township soldiers who long ago served their country. A local history buff is working to make sure those men are remembered forever.
Carved into the stone monument are the names of more than 100 men who served in what sculptor John O’Brien called “The War of the Rebellion.” We know America’s bloodiest conflict as the Civil War.
The oldest Civil War monument in Portage County, the obelisk was dedicated Nov. 28, 1865, and included the names of men who had survived, who had died of disease, who perished from injuries sustained in battle and who had died in actual conflict. Names of Nelson men who fell in the 1898 Spanish-American War were added later, and a plaque honoring Nelson’s WWI veterans was added in 1935.
Since then, time, weather and damage from traffic accidents have degraded the monument, rendering multiple names partly or completely illegible.
Cue Mark Perkins, a history enthusiast who is active with Kent’s historical and Civil War societies. In 2021, he shared information about the county’s Civil War monuments and markers to his fellow enthusiasts.
Perkins became interested in Nelson’s monument, and soon found himself devoting hours each week to research.
“All I intended to do was come up with a list of names that were on the monument, and give that to somebody. It sort of has grown a little bit from that,” Perkins said.
Perkins has created a 23-page document detailing the monument’s history and noting names that are and aren’t on it. During the course of his research, he found that he’d copied some names wrong himself.
That led to him consulting and cross-referencing dozens of historical records to find the correct information. That included mining the pages of The Portage County Democrat, which was published from 1854-1868.
“If I could find the same name in two or three records, I would assume the monument was wrong,” he said. “If it’s wrong, the men deserve to have their names properly recorded.”
During the course of the project, Perkins discovered the names of 40 additional men not listed on the monument.
“I’m not sure how many of those 40 or so names are accurate. It appears there were some that got left off. That’s something that I hope to get into more someday,” he said.
Perkins’ original plan, to create a master index of every Civil War soldier from Portage County, proved to be too ambitious.
“With all the time it’s taken me for Nelson, I don’t think it’s anything I’ll ever get done,” he said.
Though Perkins learned that some people seem to have tried to raise funds for one, Portage County does not have a single monument to memorialize and name all its Civil War veterans.
Individual communities were more successful. Windham dedicated its monument on July 4,1866; Brimfield erected its monument in Restland Cemetery in 1909; and Deerfield dedicated its marker in Deerfield Circle in 1870. Having been struck and destroyed by automobiles in the 1970s and in 2002, the Deerfield monument has since been replaced.
Atwater’s Civil War monument is in Atwater Cemetery on state Route 183. Dedicated in June 1950, it memorializes all of Ohio’s Union veterans, including John Grate, who had been the last living Union veteran in Portage County.
Kent also has a Civil War monument at Standing Rock Cemetery on North Mantua Street. Part of the cemetery’s veterans’ circle, it contains the names of the Franklin Township soldiers and sailors who enlisted, who were killed or died in service, who made it home to be buried “in this township,” or were still living when the monument was dedicated in 1928, said cemetery clerk Jean Chrest.
Perkins has shared his information with Nelson Township trustees, the Portage County Historical Society and Reed Memorial Library. It’s also on the Kent Civil War Society’s website.
“I don’t know what they can afford, and I’m not suggesting anything necessarily, but I just thought at least to be able to put this information in the hands of the libraries and the townships so they have it and they can decide how they want to use it,” he said.
Nelson Trustee Anna Mae VanDerHoven said Perkins’ information will be posted on the township’s website, but added that she and her colleagues haven’t considered what else they may do.
“I’m grateful that he checked the history of the monument because everyone that knew anything died by now, so at least that’s part of our history here in Nelson. But as far as anything else, we haven’t discussed it,” she said.
Windham, at least, has done what it could to preserve history. Its memorial, officially dubbed the Windham Township Civil War Monument, is located on Main Street near the village’s Congregational and Methodist churches.
“At some point in time, they’d gone and they’d had bronze plaques created to record all the names that are on the monument because it’s also getting harder to read, and they affixed those plaques to the monument. That’s one way to do it,” Perkins said.
Another way is to create a marker that would “go along with the monument,” or at least keep an accurate list of names for township records, he said.
“I think it’s important for the men to be remembered,” Perkins said.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.