So none forget. 

 

​In two years, our nation will celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the start of the American Revolutionary War.    

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As many as 400,000 soldiers, from both the Continental Army and state militia,  fought or participated in that war.   Wanting to preserve their memory, the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) have set a goal of finding the resting sites of as many of those Patriots as possible. To date, the graves of 55,000 have been identified; that's about 80% of the average attendance at a National Football League game. It's 15% of those buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Private John Talley was one of many who fought in that war. A Virginian, he served with the 3rd Continental Light Dragoons under the command of LtCol William Washington. He died in 1843 in Perry County, Tennessee. His grave eventually disappeared.

As a bloodline descendant, and wanting to honor his memory, in February 2021, I determined to find his grave. After a 10-month search, I found it and three others beside a private residence near the end of a dead end street. It was not the most bucolic site: 35 feet east of a buried septic tank, 40 feet north of a chicken coop, and 500 feet west of a water treatment plant.

Wanting to move him and the others (one is his wife, the other two are unknown) to a cemetery where they would receive the care and respect they deserve, in April 2023, I petitioned the Court for permission to relocate the graves. In June 2024, the Court approved my request.   On October 14, 2024 after trying to meet the court deadline for the removal and finding myself without time to complete this as I wished, I asked my attorney to file a motion to dismiss my petition.  

Finding and saving Private Talley's grave does more than add one more site to the SAR list. Or, for that matter, to FindaGrave.com or Billiongraves.com. It reinforces the foundation of our national heritage, 250 years after he and others like him helped establish our nation.  Finding and saving the resting sites of those early Patriots enables future generations to remember their sacrifice and to know that freedom is not free. It has a cost. 

 

To that end,  finding and saving the graves of these first Patriots increases awareness of the Revolution and the sacrifices John and those early Patriots made to create our nation.   It is an investment in our nation's heritage and, more importantly,  its future. 

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However, there was one other step left that enabled his descendants to honor him: establishing a memorial site where the reinterned graves would have gone had I been able to remove them as I wanted.  So on October 19, 2024, 30 descendants met at The Charles Talley Memorial Cemetery near Pleasantville.  There, with the help of the U.S. Army Honor Guard and a firing detail from American Legion Post #254 in Collinwood, the descendants turned lemons into lemonade.  

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