The past year I has been my privilege to work with Mary Thurnhorst (teacher in the Okoboji Middle School) to get classes in the school to place flags on the veterans in the Okoboji Cemetery.There are 170 veterans buried there from the Mexican War to the Vietnam War. We worked with the Okoboji Cemetery Board and the American Legion of Milford. The kids had a ball placing the flags on the graves and we hope it will become a tradition each spring.
In the process of locating the graves of the veterans we discovered three veterans that had no stone or marker. We have been trying to work through the Veterans Administration but they insist we can only obtain a plaque requested by family. One of the veterans has family but two we find no relatives in the area.
The veteran of the Mexican War (1845) is Christopher Davison. He was born in 1810 and died in 1890. Buried beside him are his wife Margaret Davison and we assume a brother C.D. Davison. The two from the Civil War are David F. Lombard and .Dr.Edward Ridgeway Hutchins who was in the Civil War and the Spanish American War. I have military records for David Lombard and Edward Hutchins for the Civil War.
I am still researching the military records for Christopher Davison. In his obituary it stated that he was in the company led by General Longstreet.(only a Lt. at first but advanced in rank and became one General Lee's great generals in the Confederacy) If that is true then we assume that David Lombard was in the same battles.The problem is that he was 30 years old at the time of the Mexican War so that is probably a question although many soldiers in the Mexican War were volunteers from various states. We think Christopher was living in Wisconsin at the time of the war. He was born in England and came over here as a young man. We hope we can obtain grave stones for these veterans.
