Memorial Day weekend last year, I went with friends to a concert at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings Co., N.Y.

Afterwards, I asked, “Who wants to come with me to visit the grave of J. Howard Kitching?” There were questioning looks all around.
I explained that he commanded the Union Army’s 6th New York Heavy Artillery in which my ancestor Arthur Bull served during the U.S. Civil War. I had just learned he was buried at Green-Wood, and located his plot in the cemetery’s directory. So six of us, maps in hand, set off together to pay our respects.
Brevet Brigadier General J. Howard Kitching is not an ancestor of mine. But because he shared the battles of my great, great grandfather’s unit in the Overland Campaign and later in the Shenandoah Valley, to me he is almost like family. Kitching, 26, was wounded in the Battle of Cedar Creek and later died. Visiting him on Memorial Day seemed fitting.
When I told a genealogy colleague about bringing friends to his grave she was surprised. “How do you convince people to go with you?” she asked. “I can never seem to get anyone interested.”
For some, it was a chance to see old-growth trees and birds along the way. Others were drawn by a sense of history. But as we stood around his small VA headstone, placed through the cemetery’s Civil War Project, and I told them about his role in the war, it was his story that ultimately captured and held their interest. A story that was cut short too soon.
Today I pause to remember BBG Kitching on the sesquicentennial of the Overland Campaign in which he fought.
© 2014 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.