Revolutionary War veterans finally recognized with a memorial stone

KENT, Conn.—This past weekend’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s birth brought recognition of some local heroes that is just about 250 years too late in the coming. 

A stone commemorating the valor of 44 Revolutionary War veterans and patriots was unveiled during the Friday night parade that kicked off the town’s two-day celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

The stone will eventually be on view along with the other panels that compose the Veterans Memorial, currently located next to Swift House on Maple Street.

It is, of course, no fault of the town’s that Revolutionary War veterans previously had no memorial to their service. Community war memorials did not become popular until the late 19th and early 20th centuries following the unprecedented losses experienced in the Civil War and then again in World War I. Before that era, monuments almost exclusively honored generals or founding fathers, but the Civil War shifted the focus to the “common soldier,” sparking a boom in local, community-funded public art. 

Since the Civil War, Kent committees have worked hard to uncover and preserve the names of all the town’s veterans from modern conflicts—but the names of earlier veterans remained unrecognized.

The Hall-Jennings American Legion Post 153, with the assistance of the Kent Historical Society, Town Historian Marge Smith and the Daughters of the American Revolution, addressed that lack during this semiquincentennial year. A float in last Friday’s parade carried the town’s newest memorial stone, commemorating the service of some of its oldest veterans.

American Legion Commander Brent Kallstrom, who initiated creation of the monument, said the effort was sparked when he received a letter in his role as sexton for the town’s cemeteries. A Maryland woman wrote saying she knew her forebear, Dr. Oliver Fuller, was buried in the town and asked Kallstrom to find the grave and make sure it was appropriately marked as a veteran’s grave. 

He and Smith found a lichen-covered stone that they assumed was Fuller’s final resting place. “We thought we had found him,” Kallstrom related. “As it was, the Cemetery Committee was talking about having a stone-cleaning demonstration, so we decided to use that stone.”

As the demonstration proceeded, it turned out that it was not Fuller’s burial place but that of two of his daughters, who had died of disease three days apart. “We found Oliver and his wife in the next row. So, then it was, ‘Let’s clean the stones of all the Revolutionary guys in Good Hill Cemetery,’ which is the oldest in town,” said Kallstrom. “We found 36 were buried there. We continued to do research and found Kent Hollow Cemetery, the next oldest, had five veterans and we found one in Bulls Bridge.”

While the research and cleaning continued, Kallstrom reflected on that fact that these men had never been recognized for their service. “I took it upon myself, on behalf of the Post, to create one,” he said. “Originally the prices I got for a five-ton stone were very high, but I found a Vietnam veteran master stone cutter who made it for a very reasonable price. We triple-checked the list of veterans and Cornwall Granite Company did the engraving.”

Cornwall Granite Company expedited the engraving of the surface, but Kallstrom said he did not publicize the stone much in advance of Friday’s parade. “I would rather over-deliver than under-deliver,” he said. “So, I didn’t promote it much because I wasn’t sure it would be done in time. It took the 250th to give us a kick in the butt to get this done.”

The American Legion Post voted unanimously to create the memorial and to pay for it. Kallstrom said the veterans are not listed alphabetically so additional names can be added without awkwardness as they are discovered. “These are only the names of those buried in Kent,” he said. “We would love to know how many more there are. When you consider the size of the town in 1774, 44 men is a huge percentage of people who decided to put their lives on hold and fight for an idea.”

The town’s Veteran Memorial Committee wants to move the four panels that form the existing memorial to a location on the town hall campus or to some other location that it considers more prominent than the Maple Street location. The Revolutionary War commemorative stone will join the other panels when the move is made and will lie flat in front of the other upright panels.

“The current monument panels are upright and polished,” he said. “For these guys I wanted a raw look reflecting the rawness of the country at that time,” said Kallstrom. “I wanted a 5,000-pound stone—that is the weight of the other tablets—and I wanted the same mass, but cutting it reduced the weight somewhat.”

“When you see the names there of the people who served, you recognize many of the names of geographic sites in the town today,” Kallstrom observed. 

With the Revolutionary War veterans now recognized, the only veterans not commemorated would be those who served in the French and Indian War (a global conflict literally started by a young and inexperienced George Washington in 1754), the  War of 1812, the 1846 war with Mexico, and the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Will any veterans of these lesser-known wars ever be added to a tablet?   “There’s no reason not to,” said Kallstrom, “but it will take some investigating.” He added that he hopes the 250th celebrations and the research done into the town’s Revolutionary heroes will spark an interest in others “to look back at our history.”