74 Spring Grove: 150 Years The Civil War at As the Civil War raged on grave capacity in a location near Spring Grove the southern and westen fronts, the charming lake Strauch had only a year into the hostilities, just created. Strauch's open lawns Cincinnatians thought first of provided a fine site for the Union Spring Grove as a place to make a graves arranged in concentric cir- fitting burial for Ohio's casuali- cles around three shallow mounds ties, even though the Cemetery and upturned cannon. Some was not ready to accommodate Confederate dead are buried else- the magnitude of fatalities. where at Spring Grove. Convinced that the last resting The Cemetery waived the place of those who might die "in usual interment fees for the Civil the defense of our Government. War lots, which quickly filled. On should be in a beautiful city of June 5, 1862, the Board, reluctant the dead/7 the U. S. Sanitary to donate more premium real Commission met with Spring estate, persuaded the state legisla- Grove's trustees early in 1862 to ture to buy two similar lots for request donation of a 100-foot $1,500 each with space reserved diameter circular lot with a 300- for "Ohio Soldiers who died in the In 1862, Spring Grove donated a circular lot near the charm- ing lake that Strauch had just 3ECTT0M created. SG LOT A- STATE OFOHIO. crs. \\.. The Civil War at Spring Grove 75 Military Service of the United about 339 remains came from dle of the first mound. Colonel States/' those first interred in temporary graves at Camp Frederick Jones occupies the next another military cemetery or on Dennison, most having died of circle; and General Robert battlefields within army lines. wounds in hospitals in or near McCook has the mound closest to Cemetery officials carefully Cincinnati. Reinterments contin- the lake. The body of General recorded the name, age, company, ued as relatives claimed some of Thomas J. Williams was added to and regiment of each of the 994 the war dead from mass graves, lot C in 1867 "in consideration of graves "that relatives, friends, and moving them elsewhere, and as his position and distinction of his strangers may know in all time to those first buried in other military family." come, that we for whom their cemeteries and battlefield trench- A number of the Civil War lives were given were not es were identified and moved dead are also buried in family lots unmindful of the sacrifice they here. One contemporary wrote at Spring Grove. Colonel William made. that we properly that in the three mounds "sleep Jones died alongside General Lytle appreciate the obligations we are those who, from home and its in the battle of Chickamauga. under to them for their efforts in endearments, started at war's Colonel Frederick Jones of the aiding to secure to us and future alarm in defense of the Union . 24th Ohio fell in leading a charge generations the blessings of a but here their dust sleeps peace- at the battle of Murfreesboro. redeemed and regenerated coun- fully." Until 1872, these individ- Other Union Generals at Spring try." Only twenty-eight bodies ual, mounded burials had tempo- Grove are Sidney Burbank and were unknown. rary numbered wooden pegs as Thomas Tinsley Heath (both in The Ohio dead came to markers, referenced by a roster in sec. 14). Wesley Cameron, an Spring Grove from Memphis, cemetery offices. architect, built a pontoon bridge Pittsburgh Landing, Vicksburg, An officer's body lies at the across the Ohio River to transport New Orleans, and even eastern center of each mound, still com- Union soldiers south during the fields, along with bodies left along manding an army of the dead. Civil War because Cincinnati had Sherman's march to the sea. In Colonel Eisner of the 50th Ohio, no other bridges in place. Many 1866 by order of Ohio's Governor, killed in Atlanta, lies in the mid- veterans who survived the war lie The Fighting rose to the rank of general. He McCooks had a law practice with Edwin Stanton, later Lincoln's Secretary of War. When the Confederacy seceded, Daniel enlisted at age 63 and was killed at Buffington fighting Morgan's Raiders. His son ; : Robert joined the fight. ;A -i::..-:. -t;.- General Alexander McDowell ; -.v, ; x; -./•;• Ki * ^V • McCook, Robert's brother sim- V. ilarly died. The family erected Alexander McCook a temple modeled after the Alabama into Tennessee, Choragic Monument to McCook, who was ill and was Lysicrates in Athens. Over riding in an ambulance, was seventeen-feet tall and nine ambushed by guerrillas. feet in diameter, the circular, Fatally wounded he died domed structure designed by Robert L. McCook August 6, 1862, at age thirty- Michael Garrit of the Hinsdale four. Doyle Granite Company, has Robert L. McCook, law partner The slain hero was one of twelve Corinthian columns of the noted German lawyer the famed "fighting and panels engraved with the Judge Johann B. Stallo, distin- McCooks," a family of Scotch names of the family's twelve guished himself at the battle of Irish origin. The family came children, topped by two Mill Springs, Kentucky, and from Steubenville, where memorial urns dedicated to was promoted to brigadier gen- Daniel McCook, the patriarch, the parents. Twenty graves eral. In 1862, while marching contributed eight sons to the surround the structure. CHS his brigade through northern Union Army, four of whom Daniel McCook Spring Grove: 150 Years at Spring Grove, the most notable commemorate each of the Ohio Spring Grove's Civil War sec- being Major General Joseph dead. The Commercial com- tion is now easily identified by Hooker. plained in April 1867, that three, thirty-two-pound cannons Early in 1863, Cincinnatians although the "Sentinel" was "evi- placed vertically in the middle of organized to erect a monument dence of the love and respect of a each of the mounds and then near the soldiers' section. A vol- generous people for the fallen surrounded by some rustic untary subscription raised defenders of our country, yet it is stonework, which disintegrated $15,000 in gold for a statue and not inscriptive." Critics judged it and has since been removed. The base — a cash value of $25,000. In but a "counterfeit presentment," a cannons, however, proved contro- 1864, the noted thirty-eight-year- generic image, not real commemo- versial. One visitor described old sculptor Randolph Rogers ration. Deteriorating wooden pegs them "planted . muzzle completed a simple statue of a marked the graves until four-inch upward, as if to shell the moon, or Union soldier on guard, titled marble squares were placed to take a crack at a shooting star, "The Sentinel" or "The Soldier of mark each then-mounded grave, reminding the beholder of the the Line." Rogers also made minimal identification and poor chimney of a low-water 'dinky' on sculptural reliefs of battle scenes commemoration. Deliberately the Ohio River." In 1870, Major for the family monument of made small and inconspicuous by General Hooker wrote Brigadier General William H. Lytle for a fee meager funding, these markers General Philip George Cooke, of $3,210. remain even more anonymous Commander of the Department of The Lytle monument and than the standard vertical stones the Lakes, about pieces of artillery Rogers's "Sentinel," ten feet tall in other Civil War cemeteries, but marking "the last resting place of not including its base, are con- they did fit into Strauch's ideal of the soldiers who had fallen in the spicuous focal points on two ends not cluttering the landscape. battle in the last rebellion." of the Civil War section,- but crit- These pieces of artillery might be ics found them inadequate to "proper monuments for the dead Fighting Joe Hooker picked up omitting the "The Sentinel" "The Sentinel," called a hyphen. After Burnside's "galvanized hero," was cast in defeat at Fredericksburg, bronze in the famed Royal Hooker was given command Foundry of Ferdinand von of the Army of the Potomac. Miller in Munich, the same He suffered defeat from place that finished the Tyler- Robert E. Lee at Davidson Fountain a few years Chancellorsville, losing about later. The bronze was about a 17,000 men. Yet his troops third more expensive than idolized Hooker for his mili- marble, known not to weather tary skills as well as for the well in the American climate. amenities of female compan- Spring Grove's "Sentinel" was ionship he regularly provided the first of several Civil War for them; such women were monuments the sculptor sub- dubbed "hookers." On the sequently designed in a similar knoll overlooking Geyser style. It established a conven- Lake, Hooker rests beside his tional form, often copied On a hillside above the Civil wife, Olivia Augusta through the next three decades War sections lies the famous Groesbeck whom he met at a for war monuments in ceme- "Fighting Joe Hooker." who ball at the Burnet House, the teries, on town commons, and held higher rank than any of city's grand hotel; she died in courthouse squares — the other generals buried in shortly after their marriage. North and South. James G. Spring Grove. Born in Hadley, Their lot is marked by a large Batterson of Hartford, Massachusetts, Hooker stud- sarcophagus of polished Connecticut, a firm which pro- ied at West Point and became Scotch granite, (sec. 30) CHS duced many of Spring Grove's a Mexican War hero. He was monuments, made the granite dubbed "Fighting Joe Hooker" foundation. "The Sentinel" after an Associated Press dis- stands at Spring Grove "as if patch sent out during the guarding the slumbering dead .