The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-03-01

A labor of love that grew into 8 fascinating hobby and Subse- quently into a statewide Works Progress Administration project is the brief history of Charles R. Hales task of locating and permanently marking the graves of all war vet erans of Connecticut.
 In 1916 MT. Hale was asked to locate the graves of the Civil War veterans in Rocky Hill cemetery, by the members of the Grand Army post of that town. So we'll did he perform this duty that it was not long before he was requested to perform similar services throughout Hartford county. By now it has become a hobby with MT. Hale-one which was destined to attract na- tional attention.
 The General Assembly, in 1919, in recognition of the finding work, enacted the following legis- lation concerning the State Librari- an: "Ec may cause to be located and permanently identified, the graves of all soldiers, sailors and marines, veterans of any war in which the Colony of Connecticut or the United States has been or may be engaged, who are buried within the limits of this state" To aid this work the legislature appro- priated $10,000 and the then state librarian, the late George s. God- ard, naturally assigned to MT. Hale the supervision of the work.
 It was then that the task assumed large and seemingly impossible pro- portions, for Connecticut, from Col onial times to the present, has par ticirated in fifteen wars in the 300- odd years of her existence. They were: Pequot, King Phillip, Queen Anne, Veteran-1ndian, England Spain. King George, French-Indian, Revolutionary, War of 1872, Semi nole, Mexican, Civil Spanish Amer ican, Mexican Border and the World war. It was then, too, that the title of State Military Necrologist was vested in MT. Hale, and, so far as is known, he is the only person so designated in the United States. | EHGA dnu W II "A IUJCCtS
 In 1884, in order to provide more white collar" jobs the EZRA as- signed force of men and women to the project and at the end of that relief agency. in 1885. the WPA took up the work and has contin- ued it as a statewide project to this day. The office of the project is at 30 Oak street, Hartford. where runners" clerks, typists and other workers collect, correlate and file great masses of authentic informa- tion relating to graves of veterans.
 Although many things worked against complete record of all vet erans' graves, not the least of which were fires, floods, ravageS of the elements and outright vandalism, the work went forward and today there are complete records of more than 60,000 such last resting places "a permanent record of great value to genealogists, historians, scholars, relatives and others.
 | Old Newspapers Studied
 The old newspapers of the state have been an invaluable source of information leading to the discov- cry of soldiers graves. Part of the WPA staff is assigned to the read ing of these old papers, dating back to 1755, the information thus gleaned used to check against other and perhaps less complete knowl- edge.
 Another branch of the activity is the examination of records of vari- ous libraries, colleges and historical societies. Men have recently been put to work at Wesleyan University, ] Middletown, the Litchfield Historical