VIRGINIA: Confederate Soldier Finally Gets Headstone
NORFOLK, Va. — More than 100 years after his burial at Elmwood Cemetery, a Confederate soldier finally has a headstone.
About 35 family members, friends and well-wishers recently gathered at the gravesite of Pvt. Samuel Dawson Bell for a ceremony honoring the Isle of Wight native’s service in the Surry Light Artillery from 1864 to 1865.
Bell’s existence was unknown to his descendants until about 18 months ago, when Annabelle Dragas Xanthos, his great-great-great-granddaughter, stumbled upon his name, approximate date of death and some military service related documents while researching genealogy on Ancestry.com.
Annabelle Xanthos, great-great-great-granddaughter of Pvt. Samuel Dawson Bell, reads a poem during a wreath-laying ceremony for Pvt. Bell at Elmwood Cemetery. (Jay Westcott | For The Virginian-Pilot)
Annabelle, 26, and her uncle, Robert Clark, who both live in Virginia Beach, had been tracing their family tree for several years. Upon learning of Bell, they sought to find out more information.
Clark found Bell’s obituary, which ran in the newspaper on Feb. 20, 1908, at the Sargeant Memorial Collection of the Norfolk Public Library.
“Obituaries have a great deal of information,” said Clark, 60, who is retired from the City of Norfolk. “We found out he had been buried at Elmwood Cemetery.”
Next stop was the city’s Bureau of Cemeteries, where Clark, Annabelle and her husband, Christopher, found Bell’s unmarked grave.
“I’m guessing it probably came down to economics,” Clark said. “We later found out that at the time of his death, Samuel Bell’s estate was worth, literally, nothing.”
Christopher Xanthos, 33, is a Greek-American Marine combat veteran who served two tours in Iraq. Originally from Long Island, N.Y., he became interested in Civil War history after moving to Hampton Roads in 2012.
“I had a Northern perspective of the Civil War and after I moved here I got to learn what the Southerners were really fighting for,” said Christopher, a medical sales representative. “It’s a lot more than what is traditionally taught in schools.”
In fact, after the Xanthos’ were married in 2013, their honeymoon consisted of a road trip through Virginia, visiting a number of historic battlefields.
The new headstone of Pvt. Dawson Bell.
Christopher said he feels an affinity for Confederate soldiers because of his experiences fighting in Iraq.
“I think veterans coming back from Iraq must feel a lot like the Confederate soldiers did when they laid down their arms after Appomattox,” he said. “We wonder, ‘Did we win? Did we accomplish anything?’ Sometimes I question, ‘Were all the difficulties worth it?’ ”
Christopher was disturbed that a soldier was interred in an unmarked grave and made it his mission to change that. He sought assistance from a local Civil War heritage group.
Kenny Harris, commander of Princess Anne Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 484, helped him complete and file paperwork with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for provision of a headstone to mark Bell’s grave.
It took about a year and submission of numerous supporting documents, Christopher said, but a headstone was delivered and installed in May.
A formal unveiling ceremony July 26 was the culmination of all the effort.
Relatives from as far away as Arkansas attended the ceremony which started with a prayer from the Confederate Soldier’s Pocket Manual of Devotions, followed by unveiling the headstone, a short speech about Bell’s life, and a reading of the poem “I Am Your Confederate Ancestor” by Jim DeArman.
“Then I spoke about how we must pass this story on from generation to generation and that our forefathers laid down their weapons, but not their colors,” Christopher said.
The event concluded with a song from the Surry Light Infantry’s archive, a flower- and wreath-laying, and an honor guard ceremony.
The family now knows a lot about Bell’s life, but they aren’t finished, Clark said.
“We want to track down and visit the farm near Farmville where he was captured by the Union soldiers,” he said.
Bell was captured during Robert E. Lee’s retreat from Petersburg to Appomattox near Farmville on April 6, 1865 and held in Newport News until his release July 1, 1865. Like other Confederate prisoners of war, he had to take an oath of allegiance to the United States of America before his release.
Research revealed that after the war, Bell married Deborah Gray, worked in the insurance business and as a dairyman in Norfolk, and had 13 children.
In 1906, he was declared disabled and “totally incapable of any occupation” by Dr. E.W. Baxter. Bell filed for military disability, claiming that since 1870, he had symptoms of “paralysis and apoplexy” from “exposure to nature” during the war.
Bell died of kidney failure Feb. 19, 1908 at the home of his son James F. Bell who lived on Omohundro Avenue. He was 63 years old. His funeral was conducted at First Baptist Church.
He was essentially destitute at the time of his death as records of the Commissioner of the Revenue listed his estate as $20 in 1906 and “none” in 1908.
“It took Chris, a Greek boy from Long Island, to get this marker for our Confederate ancestor,” Annabelle said with a chuckle.
Christopher jokes that while he’s now an official member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, he’ll always be from the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon Line.
“They still call me ‘the Yankee,'” he said.
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