I don’t often encounter anyone else at all when I am visiting smaller cemeteries to explore and photograph – large cemeteries that encourage tourist traffic are different. Sometimes there will be mourners visiting a particular gravestone or family plot, but most of the time I find myself completely alone. Occasionally, though, I will see evidence that someone else has been here before, motivated as I am to preserve the past and the memory of the dead.
An unknown person took the time to create this sign, marking Morrison J. Cannell as a Civil War soldier. Private Cannell had only been in the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry for five months and one week when he died at Newburg, Ohio, according to A History of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. If the information on this site is accurate, he was 20 at the time he enlisted and was part of Company A, the Cleveland Zoave Light Guards, which would have put him under the command of William Creighton and Orrin Crane, the two highest ranking Clevelanders to die in the Civil War (buried side by side at Woodland Cemetery). That he was in Company A is verified by the placement of his name on the 7th OVI monument in Woodland Cemetery(possibly misspelled). There are no notations in the records I have seen that reference his death as resulting from a particular battle, and the personal site dedicated to the history of the 7th OVI attributes it to disease.
A Grave Concern 