The Honor Roll Project - Freeport, NY

As part of Heather Wilkinson Rojo's Honor Roll Project, I have transcribed this Honor Roll in Freeport, NY to make the names visible to search engines like Google and Mocavo so that family researchers may find them. Please consider finding the Honor Roll(s) in your town or village and transcribing them on your blog or website. And even if you don't have a blog or website, see the Honor Roll Project for instructions on how you can submit a transcription.

Seeing all these different concepts for memorials in villages in my area has been so interesting and I have been really intrigued by this memorial in Freeport since seeing images online a few months ago. This memorial is actually part of the village's public library. And, according to a comment left below by librarian, archivist and public historian, Regina Feeney, it is the first war memorial library in New York State.

The names of some famous battlefields are engraved along the top of the building, plaques are attached to its outer walls and one of its windows is dedicated to Gold Star Mothers.

DEFENDERS OF FREEDOM

REVOLUTIONARY WAR

1775-1788

WAR OF 1812

MEXICAN WAR

1846-1848

CIVIL WAR

1861-1865

SPANISH AMERICAN WAR

1898-1899

WORLD WAR I

1917-1918

WORLD WAR II

1941-1945

KOREAN WAR

1950-1958

DEFENDERS OF FREEDOM

THIS MEMORIAL 

IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED TO

THE BRAVE SONS OF FREEPORT

WHO SERVED THEIR COUNTRY

IN TIME OF NATIONAL PERIL

THEY GAVE THEIR FULL DEVOTION

SO THAT ALL AMERICANS MAY

CONTINUE TO LIVE PROUDLY AS

FREE MEN

MAY THEIR SACRIFICES

AND VALIANT DEEDS LIVE IN

THE HEARTS AND MEMORIES OF

ALL MEN AND WITH GOD'S MERCY

MAY THOSE ACCOMPLISHMENTS

EVER KEEP OUR NATION SECURE

IN HONOR OF OUR

GOLD STAR MOTHERS

In front of this window is the Honor Roll.

Another feature that makes this memorial stand out to me is that it is the first I have visited which even mentions the wars before World War I and lists names from the Civil War and Spanish American War on its Honor Roll.

The memorial does not indicate if these are residents who served or are residents who were killed in action, although it does make reference to "their supreme sacrifice."

CIVIL WAR

1861-1865

Treadwell Bedell

William T. Golder

John Hutchinson

Benjamin F. Losee

William R. Mead

Dandridge B. P. Mott

Joseph Mott

Enoch Mulliner

Elijah K. Raynor

William Seaman

Cornell L. Simonson

Asa Smith

Vanderveer Smith

SPANISH AMERICAN WAR

1898-1899

Charles Gombert

Asa L. Johnson

Charles A. Scott

WORLD WAR I

1917-1919

Thomas Willis Benham

Emile C. Berard

Theodore de Kruijff

William F. Downs

William E. Ensko

Charles Gantt

Charles P. Gould

Mabel Pauline Guest

E. Stanly Hart

Harold C. Hubert

John Intellisano

Charles Jordano

Harold Earl Maxon

Henry T. Mohr

Henry Morrison

James C. Rich

Arthur J. Smith

William Clinton Story

John J. Thurston

James E. Vetal

Osbourne Wells

Walter Whittaker

Townsend C. Young

WORLD WAR II

1941-1945

Onorado W. Agnitti

Norman E. Andersen

John E. Berdich

Robert H. Bergman

Saul W. Berson

Daniel C. Binneweg

Robert W. Bliss

Robert W. Boyle

Thomas E. Brittingham

A. Leslie Brown

Aubrey E. Burch

Frank D. Buwen

Donald J. Campbell

Kenneth M. Clay

James Collins

Richard Crouse

Oscar De Loney

Robert B. Eastman

Paul G. Eberius

Berking T. Edds

Ira I. Edelman

Melford Elderd

Roger J. Ellison

George E. Gardiner

John Gildea

A. Theodore Goldsmith

Warren Gollender

Andrew G. Holmes

Donald L. Jackson

Charles M. Kearns, Jr.

Daniel Kelleher

Fred R. Licence

Ralph G. Licence

Frederick F. Madden

Robert J. Maher

Charles O. Martin

Wilbur F. McGinley

Henry J. Meyer

Nicholas L. Mileo

Frank A. Muldowney, Jr.

Patrick J. Muro

Paul T. Murphy

John W. Neuendorfer

William C. Pendleton

Richard Perlman

Arthur F. Polley

Carman J. Preziosi

Irvin Reich

Alva W. Rodriguez

Mortimer R. Salmon

John A. Schlegel

Alvin R. Schumacher

George A. Schutte

William A. Serby

Walter G. Sheard

Jerome J. Simandl

Warren H. Stevens

M. Blaine Taylor, Jr.

Arthur E. Temple

Bayard D. Tewksbury

E. Lee Theuman

John J. Vetter

John C. Viebrock

Walter J. Wascher, Jr.

Harold C. Wilson, Jr.

KOREAN WAR

1950-1955

Ronald A. Canfield

Wilbur L. Bond

Clifford H. Craw

Felix Garland

Norbert Francis Holter

Edward C. Koenke, Jr.

Robert E. McAllister

VIETNAM WAR

1961-1975

Roger O. Clemens

Michael P. Donlon

Charles H. Emery

Gerald H. Faulkner, Jr.

Richard F. LaBarbera

Kevin Bernard McGovern

Dennis Patrick Molese

Thomas Lawrence Morano

Don Brown Parsons, Jr.

Viesturs Reikmanis

Victor Joseph Ruggero, Jr.

Bruce N. Sweeney

Gary W. Thornlow

Ronald E. Tuitt

Robert Michael Wainz

Also on the grounds of the library is this plaque to one of the men listed under World War I.

This tree was planted and dedicated Sept. 1st, 1919 by the Freeport Fire Department in Memory of Henry Theodore Mohr, a member of the Department and one of the first Freeport soldiers of The American Expeditionary Force killed in action in the World War.

Regina Feeney, the historian I mentioned above, along with a man by the name of Don Schultz, wrote the biographies of the men on these memorials in addition to other Freeporters who are not named. Follow this link and look for the .pdf files under each conflict to see the biographies.

Monthly Genealogy Progress - March

March was a far more productive month in terms of my genealogy goals than January and February, thank goodness!

In addition to posting for the Honor Roll Project and completing two hours of indexing on Family Search, I have almost completed my new public tree on Ancestry up to my second great-grandparents. For this project, I am making sure that I have documentation attached or referenced for all the facts attached to these ancestors and making sure that I have downloaded all of the available documentation from Ancestry in an organized fashion, meaning that all of this documentation is downloaded right away into an appropriate folder and recorded in my research logs in Evernote. I'm trying not to do any analysis of new documents for lines I am not currently researching, but as you probably know, that can be difficult when new information is right in front of you.

It is nice to see that as I revisit some of these ancestors and find new documentation (via hints, not new research), I find that I analyze and see so much more potential in these documents than I did before. It's great to read and take classes and watch webinars, but the true reward for me is in the new way of thinking and finding that I'm doing it automatically.

Last week, I finally made it to the Family History Center in Plainview to download some documents but they were having trouble with their firewall and I could not use ArkivDigital while I was there. I have no problem paying to access ArkivDigital, but right now I only want to look up a couple of dates and that isn't worth $42 to me. So, I'll have to wait until I'm ready to really dig into my Swedish lines and spend the time on the site to make it worth the price.

And after procrastinating for over a month since my package of archival tissue arrived, I finally got serious about rescanning my grandfather's three photo albums from about 1912-1917. I have completed the first album and started on the second.

In addition to working on my stated goals for the year, I also did a bit of research on one of Donald's Irish lines. I'm familiar with the issues that come with researching common names, but doing that in an urban center like New York City during a peak immigration period is something new for me. What a challenge that is going to be when I get serious about it!

This month I'll be getting ready to head to Ottawa, Ontario and Gatineau (formerly Buckingham), Quebec on May 4th. I can't wait to finally get to the cemetery there!  I'm not sure about this month, but hopefully, I'll have more to post about in May after this trip.