Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Historic Preservation topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Council approves flagstone donation for Eagle Scout’s Hillside Cemetery Civil War restoration
Summary
An Eagle Scout project to restore and better display Civil War-era graves at Hillside Cemetery will receive 30 feet of flagstone from the city after the Common Council approved a resolution authorizing the donation.
The Middletown Common Council approved a resolution to donate flagstone for an Eagle Scout project that will restore and better display graves of African American Civil War veterans at Hillside Cemetery.
Tenth-grader Joseph (surname variants in the meeting record) told the council he planned to move scattered grave markers and lay a 30-foot flagstone walkway to make the site more visible and respectful. He asked the council to provide about 30 feet of flagstone from the city’s inventory.
“My name is Joseph … I’m currently working on my Eagle Project, and the plan is just to move the graves from Hillside, which are dumped in a pond and kinda disregarded for and make them more open and so the community could learn more about it,” Joseph told the council.
Andy Mills, who the mayor identified as associated with Hillside, told the council the stones in question are along the back of the cemetery and mark graves of African American Civil War veterans. “As they say on the gravestones, these were some of the colored troops… But these are African American civil war veterans,” Mills said.
The council passed the donation under a resolution sponsored by Alderman Green; the roll call showed all council members voting in the affirmative. The mayor said that after the vote city staff, including Jacob, would be authorized to cooperate with Joseph on the project.
Council members and speakers described the project as a restoration and educational effort; no transfer of burial remains or changes to gravesites beyond the placement of flagstone and some stone-moving were described in council remarks. Joseph said he had identified flagstone in the town inventory and requested 30 feet to connect the restored area to the cemetery’s main road.
The resolution passed with the recorded votes listed below. Mayor DeStefano and members of the council praised the scout’s initiative and said they looked forward to a ribbon-cutting when the work is finished.
