Richville, New York, Monument to the Unreturned Soldiers of the Civil War

Further along Highway 812/11 in upstate New York north of New Bremen...

is the town of Richville, which is on a small hill east of the road somewhat off the main drag so that it would not catch your attention if you weren't looking for it.  It is large for an upstate town and appears to have been quite prosperous and well populated at one time and they had the good fortune of being off the main road and basically bypassed by progress.  Now there is little left but the churches, the cemeteries, the fire department,  and houses and empty shops in disrepair.  No bar, no stores, just a quiet isolation from the world zipping by below which is probably just fine with them.  As you are driving north on the 812 you will see the Welsh Society Building at the beginning of the turn off to the right, up the hill.  You can't miss it, and you shouldn't.  

What made this town so interesting was a monument in the Wayside Cemetery..."In Memory of the Unreturned Soldiers of the war of 1861-1865", a war so recent that it did not yet have a name.  There are 36 names on the monument,  a great number for such a small and out of the way place that was so distant and detached from the conflict yet such a part of something that cannot conceivably have touched their lives except in the abstract at first and then the loss.

It is the word "Unreturned" that sets this monument apart.  A poignant  euphemism for the unspeakable.  What happened to those "Unreturned" as their mothers, fathers, wives, children, families waited forever for the return of the unreturned that would never happen.  Did some of the families is this isolated outpost of America received some sort of notice from the army one way or the other.  The empty years of waiting, living in hope, clinging to a prayer in a time when people often never traveled more than 20 or 30 miles from home and  lived never knowing and never wanting to believe.  36 young men, "Unreturned" from a war that was not theirs, not so different from the Viet Nam, the Missing in Action.  Men who marched off into oblivion.  I ache for those families who sent their sons off to never return.  For what?  

                                                                   Pablo