Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- A Veteran's Service and Gravesite

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

 It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has our assignment for this week:

1)  To celebrate Veterans Day, pick one of your ancestors or relatives with a military record and a gravestone. 

2)  Tell us about your ancestor's military service.

3)  Tell us about your ancestor's gravestone - where is it, what is the inscription, when were you last there?  Show us a picture of it if you have one available.

4)  Write your own blog post about this ancestor and his gravestone, or share it in a Comment to this blog post, or in a  Facebook post.

Here is mine:

I have written about my grandfather, William C. Hork, who served in the Navy during World War I on a submarine tender. Check it out here.

Today, I’d like to focus on my grandmother’s brother, John Cyril Sullivan, or as we knew him, Uncle Jack. I wrote about his early life in this post. Now that I know more about his service, I shall focus on that.

I had first found the best clue to his service from the passenger ship records on Ancestry. Originally I hadn’t found him in the lists. But then I thought about searching for him using his name “Jack” Sullivan, and there he was, Jack C. Sullivan, with next of kin his father John H. Sullivan of Anaconda, Montana.[1]

During the war, he was with the 4th Engineers in Company E. His service record was lost in the 1973 fire. So I had to discover what he did through other means. One was a book, Columbia to the Rhine: Being a Brief History of the Fourth Engineers, and Their Trip from the Columbia River, in the State of Washington, U.S.A. to the Rhine River in Germany, which told the complete story of the 4th Engineers from their formation in Vancouver, Washington to their discharge after returning home.[2] Rarely, was Company E mentioned specifically, so I wasn’t sure what they did exactly.

So off to the National Personnel Records Center, the NARA office in St. Louis, where I got the chance to look at the morning reports for Co. E of the 4th Engineers. These reports didn’t begin until they were overseas, so I have to assume that what the above book wrote about the Engineers probably pertained to Co. E, too.

I discovered from the book and the morning reports, that the 4th Engineers were responsible for cutting down concertina wire and rebuilding roads and bridges, mostly under the line of fire. I could clearly see how they traveled across France and someday I’ll make a map. Once Germany surrendered, the morning reports were typed. Perhaps the unit acquired a German typewriter.

Here is the one mentioning Sgt Jack C Sullivan

Their work seemed dangerous while traveling across France, but afterwards, they were doing mostly duty work, cleaning and repairing, unloading lumber, working in the quarry at Adenau, and such. They left Germany 19 July heading to Brest, where they boarded the USS Von Steuben for the United States.

I was hoping to find out how my great-uncle was injured, as he seemed to have a limp when I knew him. Only one paperwork said he was gassed, and only one morning report mentioned him. That was about work he was doing.[3] So I may never learn of what really happened.

Jack lived most of adult life in Southern California and is buried in the Calvary Catholic cemetery in Los Angeles. I have an image of the tombstone.[4] However, he never served in the Navy as the marker indicates. Someone must have gotten it mixed up.

I plan to someday write up his life and his journey while in France and Germany. The sources I have found plus the images I took at the World War I Museum in Kansas City and the Military Museum in Red Wing, Minnesota, will help me tell his story. 

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[1] U.S., Army Transport Service, Passenger Lists, 1910-1939, database, Ancestry (http:www.ancestry.com : 19 Apr 2019), U.S.S. Steuben, 19 Jul 1919, no. 16, Jack C. Sullivan, 568973; citing NARA RG 92, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774-1985, roll 352.

[2] Columbia to the Rhine: Being a Brief History of the Fourth Engineers, and Their Trip from the Columbia River, in the State of Washington, U.S.A. to the Rhine river in Germany, written & illustrated by the men of the Regiment, printed by Westdeutsche Grossdruckerei, GMBH, Wald Germany. It can be viewed at the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/columbiatorhineb00unitrich/page/n12.

[3] Morning Report, 4th Engineers, Co. E, February 11, 1919; National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Missouri.

[4] Calvary Cemetery, 4201 Whittier Blvd, Los Angeles, California, Sec R, L634, grave 8. Photo taken by Lisa S. Gorrell, Aug 2008.

Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.