National Cemetery System
                            by Todd Eastman
                             17 June 1990

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   I've just had a wonderful experience and wanted to share it with
everyone with the hope that this may help someone else.
     
   I have located the name and address of the National Cemetery System
which keeps records for soldiers who are buried in national cemeteries
from 1861 to the present. Since I have been trying to locate the
gravesite of my GGG-Grandfather who died during the Civil War, I 
thought I would try writing to them.
    
   I already had all the specifics on this ancestor, the state from
which he served, dates, company and infantry, etc.  All that I lacked
was the exact burial site  I wrote a couple of months ago with all
the information I had requesting assistance in locating his gravesite.
       
   Lo and behold, I just received a nice letter from the National
Park Service representative at the Andersonville National Historic
Site.  It seems that my original letter to the National Cemetery
System was forwarded to Andersonville, and the folks at Andersonville
searched their records for my ancestor.  The result was a nice black
and white polaroid photo of my ancestor's tombstone, as well as a
copy of the burial record, a map of Andersonville prison with the
exact location of the tombstone, and additional information on the
history of Andersonville prison.
       
   Not only did this cost me nothing more than 25 cents postage in
writing to them, but they were even nice enough to return my SASE
unused!
       
   For those of you who may be trying to locate the gravesite of a
soldier, here is the address I wrote to:
      
         Cemetery Service
         National Cemetery System
         Veterans Administration
         810 Vermont Ave., N.W.
         Washington, DC  20422
    
   If you write, be sure and give as much information as possible to
assist them in their search, and be patient in waiting for a response.
Hope someone finds this useful!
    
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³  This file appears on The Source of Magic BBS, Ridgefield CT   ³
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