VA approves headstone for Civil War soldier at Alms House Cemetery

Provided photo: Albion eighth-graders Mary McCormick (left) and Kendall Peruzzini are shown at last month’s Orleans County legislature meeting with their teacher Tim Archer.

ALBION – The  Department of Veterans Affairs approved an application for a headstone for a Civil War solider with an unmarked grave at the Alms House Cemetery on West Countyhouse Road.

The headstone is expected to be delivered in a  few weeks, Albion school officials said.

Albion eighth-graders Mary McCormick and Kendall Peruzzini spent part of their summer vacation working on the application to the VA. They scoured records from more than a century ago, working with Orleans County Historian Catherine Cooper at Albion Town Historian Sarah Basinait.

They needed to prove Union soldier Daniel Walterhouse was buried in an unmarked grave at the cemetery about 114 years ago. Many people were buried in a cemetery not far from the Alms House, which was a home for penniless, destitute, sick and others with infirmities and challenges.

The Alms or “Poor House” was open from 1833 to 1960. The Alms House closed in 1960 when the county nursing home opened on Route 31 in Albion.

Peruzzini, McCormick and their teacher Tim Archer submitted an application to the National Cemetery Administration, seeking a headstone for Walterhouse.

The students’ effort has been highlighted in local and Western New York media, and today was featured in The Washington Post, in an article headlined, “A Civil War soldier didn’t have a tombstone. Two teens just got him one.” Click here to see that article.