A Request For Genealogical Help

Please refer to my "Corporal Wilhelm 'William' Moegling" blog post made yesterday.

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"BOXES OF BONES"

So here is my thought and request for help this day. Will somebody – anyone at all – please come forward with significant key facts showing that one of these exhumed “Boxes Of Bones” on display for a Utica Sunday Tribune photographer is NOT 2nd Great Granddad Corporal Wilhelm “William” Moegling. These two skeletons are but two of the thousands of persons dug up from their "final-resting-place" at Potter Street Cemetery -- essentially because those great thinkers in Utica, New York let their earliest municipal burial ground fall victim to neglect and probable vandalism.  These great thinkers in Utica now wanted these hallowed cemetery lands for a playground.  Look at these lands today and you find a highway, a parking lot, a plumbing dealer, a drug rehab & counseling house, and a sports bar. Urban renewal... really nice going Utica, New York!

No monument is present today to the memory of this once active municipal cemetery or to honor the dust of those many thousands souls who yet remain spread in the grounds at this former cemetery site.

Corporal Wilhelm "William" Moegling, late of the 97th Infantry Regiment of New York State Volunteers is missing. Please show our family that this wounded and disabled Civil War Soldier who lived, who attended church, who worked, and who died in 1869 in Downtown Utica, Oneida County, New York is not one of these skeletons on unceremonious and disgraceful display in this September 1916 photo.

Thanks very much.

DJ --- out

Reference: A news article as published 1 Oct 1916 in The Utica Sunday Tribune.



Our Grandfather Corporal William Moegling

My four-year search for the remains of Great-Great Grandfather Wilhelm “William” Moegling is continuing. But the discovery of new firm and valid related data relating to Potter Street Cemetery seems unlikely.  This Utica, NY municipal cemetery was unfortunately sometimes called “Potter’s Field,” so named to acknowledge the original Potter Family property owners who conveyed the three plots of land that became this city municipal cemetery.  The cemetery was not a burial ground reserved exclusively for the poor, as the name potter's field usually implies.  Many prominent early citizens of the Utica, NY area were interred at Potter Street Cemetery over the 122 year span of active use.  According to researchers with Saint Agnes Catholic Church in Utica, NY, as many as 10,000 persons were likely interred at Potter Street Cemetery.

It seems highly likely that Potter Street Cemetery was Grandpa Moegling's logical and probable temporary resting place. Further, it is probable his grave marker, if any, was a wooden marker design (as many there were), and by 1916 was lost, decayed and/or vandalized when the 1916 destruction of Utica's Potter Street Cemetery took place. We know from Corporal William Moegling's Compiled Military Service Record (CMSR), as received from National Archives and Records Administration that Grandpa did not receive his earned government-furnished headstone following his untimely 1869 death.  And about 80% of the several thousand late 1916 exhumed souls at Potter Street Cemetery were classified as unidentified persons, several skeletons grouped together in a single small boxes for "cost savings" and taken to Forest Hill Cemetery on Oneida Street, Utica, NY.  Most of Grandpa's remains were likely placed in one or more of these small containers with the remains of other unidentified persons and unceremoniously reburied in a 100' x 100' hollow purchased by the city of Utica as a mass grave site for unidentified Potter Street Cemetery souls. This Forest Hill Cemetery mass grave burial site is now defined as Section 58B (a/k/a: "City of Utica Public Burial Grounds"), a site purchased by the Utica city authorities in 1916. Any bureaucratic suggestion that absolutely none of the unidentified persons exhumed in 1916 from this 122-year old Potter Street Cemetery were U.S. Military Veterans of the Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The Mexican War, The American Civil War or even the Spanish-American War simply won’t pass a smell test. My Grandpa, Corporal Wilhelm “William” Moegling was a Military Veteran of both The Mexican War and The American Civil War.

Grandpa Moegling and his wife Rosella ("Grandma Rosa") Moegling had three minor kids at Grandpa’s death in late November 1869, they were financially not prosperous (perhaps considered today as working poor), they lived in rented housing on the corner of Varick and Fayette Streets in downtown Utica, NY, they attended the original Zion German Evangelical Lutheran Church at Fay and Cooper Streets in downtown Utica, and Grandpa was working in his lifelong occupation as a "dyer" at Mrs. A. McClean's Scourer and Dyer Shop on 26 Hotel Street in downtown Utica. His home, his Church and his workplace essentially border the 1869 city-owned Potter Street Cemetery (all within a half mile radius). Grandpa had submitted a Military Disability Pension application in July 1863, this following his U.S. Army Civil War Discharge For Disability in early 1863. Official papers from the National Archives in Washington DC document he suffered several war-related disabilities including a gunshot wound received during the Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862. His veteran's invalid pension application also states he has a service-connected double hernia. Strong evidence is that Grandpa's Civil War Army Veteran Disability Pension application had not yet been approved by his death 23 Nov 1869.

There is a spot in Forest Hill Cemetery nearly centered between cemetery Section 58 and 58A roadside signs on the lower southern perimeter road that Forest Hill Cemetery Superintendent Gerard Waterman called Section 58B (but there was no observed 58B signage here). Section 58B (a/k/a: "City of Utica Public Burial Grounds") is directly south from the small roadside gravestone of Mary M. (d. 1937) and Edward R. Stramm Sr. (d. 1926), the Stramm gravestone no more than five feet from the south side of this perimeter road, and has a couple large trees surrounding. Furthermore, Section 58B essentially borders the Forest Hill Cemetery heavy gage wire south perimeter fence. Superintendent Waterman told me his crew was digging a grave near this 1916 city purchased 100'x100' site and several bones were unintentionally dug up, causing him to research and discover that this location is where the bones of unknown souls from Potter Street Cemetery were re-buried in a mass grave. No honorary markers are present to flag Section 58B as the location for mass re-burials of those several thousand "Unknown Souls" exhumed from Potter Street Cemetery. This unmarked mass burial ground for the several thousand Potter Street Cemetery unknown disinterred is a colossal disgrace. Some form of significant memorial monument is required here to formally mark this ground. Section 58B is the same location where the majority of the identifiable disinterred Potter Street Cemetery skeletons were re-buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in a place between two other public burial grounds called “The Tiers."

The contempt we presently hold for our post Civil War federal government -- delay and more delay for those Civil War disability pension applications -- so therefore perhaps the pension applicant will die first as Grandpa Moegloing surely did. A contempt is growing for those period leaders of the City of Utica who allowed the city's first municipal burial ground Potter Street Cemetery at Potter and Water Streets to fall victim to the natural and unnatural ravage of time. 

Attack On Constitution Amendment II

Amendment II: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The language seems very clear. What is it that the Obama gun control loving "experts" don't comprehend about those 27 very clearly written words? And "a well regulated Militia" does not have to be "well regulated" under federal or state government control.

The U.S. Constitution and Amendment II do not say that.

Many of the leaders who formed volunteer regiments to fight the American Civil War did so using personal funds and privately owned logistics & supplies. The township's people often supplied necessary seed money & supplies. Many of those early regiments originated from volunteer local militias where soldiers initially trained and used their private weapons. Following the American Revolution, every able-bodied man of about age 18-45 (might be a bit off on those age limits) was also required to own a firearm weapon. The founders never intended all "well-regulated militias" to be under the absolute authority of a federal chief executive. Show me where that is written... you won't find it. And I of course realize what this sounds like... "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them..." the People... if properly armed... can meet, associate and organize in well-regulated militias and "...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..." We can only hope that the coming revolution will be peaceful.

The problem with a little gun control is that old slippery-slop concept, it is so easy thereafter to do a little more & and then a little more. Look around after a bit and you may have given up a natural Human Right. And that's at the real base of NRA's problem with the liberal gun control nuts. Slippery slop governance... it's no way to run a clam shop. The federal government repeatedly does illogical and ethically wrong things. Look a history... Native American treatment, Slavery, the Whiskey Rebellion, the New York City Riots against the Civil War Draft, Wounded Knee, Japanese Internment Camps, the Waco Branch Fire, the Patriot Act, and so much more. Gosh, federal government weapons control isn't exactly that smart either under any political party (e.g., Iran/Contra, or that really dumb cluster-SNAFU over the last couple of years (Operation Fast and Furious) that gave automatic weapons to Mexican Drug Lords, etc., etc.). It may be that gun control acts in the New York State Legislature this week and Cuomo's "NY SAFE Law" is unconstitutional. We will see... the lawyers are now lining up to test this.

Do you think these dangerous leftist zealots might want to re-write the U.S. Constitution? And along the way, throw out the Natural Human Rights that a liberal left doesn't like... only to inject their own "progressive" liberal ideas. "All People (animals) are created equal, but some People (animals) are more equal than others." Stolen words I know... but one can't misread our Constitution Amendment II and simultaneously keep a straight face. And too, there was then and still remains a firm reason why the Right to Bear Arms is Amendment II. This Right was then to the Founders and today stands so strongly important... trumped only by our capstone Natural Rights... Amendment I: the Freedoms of Speech, Press, Association and Religion.

But Would They Fight Now?

Recent personal study of several New York State Volunteer U.S. Army Regiments during the Rebellion has caused some among us to rethink the fundamental validity of that "War to save the Union." Two separate and equal countries––perhaps not a bad idea that arrives 150 years too late. Two countries in what is now called the USA, call them the United Confederation of American States (holding strong state's rights in a pro-business conservative land); and the other––an imperial federal government United Federal Socialist States of America (a strong federalism nanny state and liberal leftist “progressive” land). And slavery would have turned to dust under its own weight––been gone for many decades in both of these two new republics. The abomination of slavery would have soon failed without fighting that terrible War of the Rebellion that may have cost over 800,000 American lives and unknowable American treasure.

Many, perhaps most, union military recruits in 1861 and 1862 did not sign-up to free the slaves––or even to save the union. These Private Soldier Volunteers were mainly farm boys––boys who essentially became mere cannon fodder in the view of so many incompetent union colonels and generals. They went to this fight largely because they were told it was the manly thing to do... coupled with very strong feelings of military rage spewing from pulpits and political stages. And this Rebellion was certain to be a very short anyway. Volunteer recruits received an enlistment "bounty" of perhaps $100-$300, an enlistment bonus supported in Upstate New York by the various townships. The bounty given to some late war recruits was even higher at $500 for enlistments as short as one year. In 2012 dollars, that cash enlistment bounty is in the $2500-$7000 range. And tax-free dollars too! I suspect this tidy sum was very attractive to most of those relatively poor Upstate New York farm boys.

AMENDMENT X to the United States Constitution (part of the Bill Of Rights) should be more prominently cited in a new United Confederation of American States Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  This God given right, and the other nine vital God given rights specified by the Bill of Rights, shall not be infringed. And there would be no such necessary provision set forth in the new national supreme United Federal Socialist States of America Constitution. The corrupt United States liberal federal judiciaries today seem committed to increased Federalism and largely ignore the clear and expressly written Bill of Rights Amendment X. Liberal left progressiveness can take full control with this socialist form of activist judiciary.  And we conservatives will sharply disallow such unelectable judicial activism. 

So my basic thought today is really a couple of simple questions. With complete knowledge of the present state of the union, who among us truly thinks that massive number of farm boys a century and a half ago would volunteer to fight this “War To Save The Union?” If those volunteers could entirely understand and grasp the full impact of how this country has morphed into the liberal socialist society in those future 21st Century days––would they choose to fight and die to preserve this union of increasing liberal progressivism? Perhaps likely not.

Fly The American Flag Today

Of course this day of remembrance is not for us the living, but rather to honor those departed souls whose lives were swiftly taken from them on that horrible day. Who really knows what the exact mindset of those who planned and executed the September Eleventh attack? Many of us understand this depraved act was based in the teaching of a radical and bloodthirsty religion. And many of us wonder too why some Americans refuse to understand this fundamental truth. Will we ever know the true impact of those September 11, 2001 cowardly acts? I think not.

But we can spend some significant time today thinking and remembering those thousands of sufferings generated by those murderous acts.  Here in upstate New York it is again a beautiful day––a day that began very much like that awful day began. Our thoughts may flash back in remembrances of those nearly three thousand innocent people who were outright murdered by a vile act of senseless muslin terrorism. And we shall perhaps never know just how many other lives have been forever tainted by this act of religious terrorism. We may think of the families of those murdered, or our courageous first responders who suffered both physical and emotional sickness directly related to their capable rescue assistance. Or we could ponder that vast majority of Americans who feel such a deep emptiness in our collective sad loss today.

Let us today just reverently and respectfully meditate––and remember those many lost victims who were so needlessly murdered on this dreadful anniversary. Today we might internally speak to our God, as we proudly fly our American Flag at half-staff in collective remembrance of those many terribly lost souls.

All My Friends Are Working Or Rich

...and we don't need Social Security Retirement Income.

The current political debate by Washington politicians on a payroll tax cut extension is presented by most of the news media in an unclear manner. Many citizens assume the tax cut proposal involves a reduction in withheld Federal Income Tax. But this is not so…the tax cut proposal is a reduction in Social Security Payroll withholding tax. My goodness, a scheme like this could only be hatched in Washington. We have a near bankrupt Social Security System that is intended to supplement retiree income. And our federal politicians are moving to reduce the system’s life-blood revenue source. Where and when will the Social Security System revenue shortfall be addressed? It should be obvious to the most casual observer that this “tax cut” plan will more swiftly bring about the predictable bankruptcy of the entire Social Security System. Reduce Federal Income Tax if you must, but please leave the single funding source for our Social Security System untouched. The retiree community would be far better off if many of these Washington politicians were paid not to think.

Hank Jr.'s New Song

Sure wish Hank Williams Jr. made a better analogy with his recent comment on Fox News Channel. You know, that statement comparing the Obama & Boehner golf outing to socializing by Hitler and Israel’s Prime Minister. Hank Jr. is an entertainer...not a politician...and the left wing media sure came out negative on Hank's acknowledged lame comment. But I wonder why "Fox & Friends" teleprompter readers (they are not reporters) strayed from the stated purpose of Hank’s invitation to make guest comments on their program? I've seen several cases where the "reporting" by "Fox & Friends" personnel is inaccurate or incomplete.

Fair and balanced, well maybe --- DJP

Take a listen to Hank's great song. http://www.hankjr.com

What others are saying: http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Hank-Williams-Jr-wrote-a-new-song-about-Fox-New?urn=nfl-wp9130