EBENSBURG — n Wales, the newspaper headline reads: “Memorial for when Evans came marching home.”
And in the Ebensburg area, that’s what it will be Saturday, when a headstone will be dedicated to Welsh-born Thomas Evans, a Civil War hero who won the Medal of Honor but whose burial place was unknown.
Now, after almost three years of researching – and sometimes disagreeing – historical groups and Civil War buffs will come together to pay their respects at Bethel Cemetery in Blacklick Township.
That’s what all finally agreed on as the most likely burial site.
Efforts to honor the hero began in 2004 when a national group approached Cambria Township supervisors.
Not knowing where Evans was buried, members of the Medal of Honor Historical Society said they were ready to place a headstone at the historic Beulah Cemetery.
But local historian and Ebensburg lawyer Lewis Ripley objected, saying Evans is buried at Bethel Cemetery in Blacklick Township.
Like Beulah, that cemetery is also an old Welsh institution, founded in 1833.
And, in fact, the county’s veterans office does have a record of an Evans being buried at Bethel.
So began a long effort, with Ebensburg historical groups sometimes wrangling with national Civil War historians, to obtain a grave marker and plan a ceremony, which will be held on Saturday at Bethel Cemetery. It will be followed by a private luncheon for program participants.
Lauding those plans is an article in the Western Mail, a major daily newspaper in Wales.
A copy was sent by Angharad Edwards of Carmarthenshire, South West Wales who addressed it this way: The Civil War Historians, Blacklick Township, Near Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Remarkably, it made its way to Ripley.
Evans has become a symbol of the heroism of the common man – a Welsh immigrant who worked here as an ironworker and coal miner and died anonymously and poor, never claiming a military pension.
But as a soldier on that day in 1864 when he captured the flag and in the words written in his diary, he fought hard:
“I hauled off and hit that flag shaft a right smart whack with the bayonet and it must have really stung the Johnny’s hands. I finally managed to raise my rifle and says, ‘Drop that flag or I will pin you to a tree.’ ”
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