In 1869, Governor Oden Bowie, of Maryland, requested that the state should take care of the Confederate dead from the battlefields of western Maryland. Wind, water, and animals had exposed the dead, hurriedly buried in shallow graves. Governor Bowie requested that Thomas Boullt of Hagerstown, Maryland, one of the Trustees for Maryland in the Antietam Cemetery, employ men to find and identify the Confederate dead buried in Washington and Frederick counties. Moses Poffinberger and Aaron Good of Sharpsburg identified "ad hoc" burial sites from throughout the western part of the state, primarily from the battlefields at Antietam, Monocacy and South Mountain, but also from skirmishes and from Robert E. Lee's retreat from Gettysburg.