HERMANSVILLE — Ted Gurgall, of the Floriano-Stecker Kelly American Legion Post 340 in Hermansville, is busy making crosses that will be put up at the veterans memorial plot at Meyer Township Cemetery in Hermansville for Memorial Day to honor Meyer Township veterans who served their country and are buried there. Records at the IXL Museum in Hermansville indicate the first stone marker over a grave at the Meyer Township Cemetery honored a Civil War veteran, Marcellus V.G. Strong (1838-1896). The lettering on the ornate red granite monument reported that he was an “Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, War of the Rebellion.” He came to Hermansville after the war and became village marshal. Strong had no family and after he died, the money in his estate was used to erect the marker in his memory. The marker stood as a unusual adornment of the new cemetery in a period when all the other markers were wood crosses. Several Civil War veterans lived in Hermansville, which was founded only 13 years after the end of the war, but the village population was too small to foster a Post of the Grand Army of the Republic or of the Spanish-American War Veterans after the war of 1896. Meyer Township has supported the Floriano-Stecker Post, organized in July 1934, as its organization representing veterans of all wars. The Post serves the cause of community reverence for its heroic dead and of the ex-servicemen’s devotion to their nation, state and home communities.

HERMANSVILLE — Ted Gurgall, of the Floriano-Stecker Kelly American Legion Post 340 in Hermansville, is busy making crosses that will be put up at the veterans memorial plot at Meyer Township Cemetery in Hermansville for Memorial Day to honor Meyer Township veterans who served their country and are buried there.

Records at the IXL Museum in Hermansville indicate the first stone marker over a grave at the Meyer Township Cemetery honored a Civil War veteran, Marcellus V.G. Strong (1838-1896). The lettering on the ornate red granite monument reported that he was an “Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, War of the Rebellion.”

He came to Hermansville after the war and became village marshal. Strong had no family and after he died, the money in his estate was used to erect the marker in his memory. The marker stood as a unusual adornment of the new cemetery in a period when all the other markers were wood crosses.

Several Civil War veterans lived in Hermansville, which was founded only 13 years after the end of the war, but the village population was too small to foster a Post of the Grand Army of the Republic or of the Spanish-American War Veterans after the war of 1896.

Meyer Township has supported the Floriano-Stecker Post, organized in July 1934, as its organization representing veterans of all wars. The Post serves the cause of community reverence for its heroic dead and of the ex-servicemen’s devotion to their nation, state and home communities.