For the past century, a row of military graves in Tacoma's Oakwood Hill Cemetery has been conspicuously gap toothed. Only a patch of grass has marked the final resting place of David Franklin, Tacoma's only Black naval Civil War veteran.
That changes Saturday when a years-long effort spearheaded by a Civil War historian will finally bring Franklin the white marble tombstone that was forgotten in 1920.
Tumwater-based historian Loran Bures' quest to get Franklin his headstone began in 2017 when he was researching Pierce County's Civil War veterans. He found documents listing Franklin and his burial at Oakwood Hill but when he visited the cemetery he couldn't find his grave.
Using cemetery records, Bures discovered the gap in the neat row of military burials was Franklin's unmarked grave. That's when he set out to learn who Franklin was and right a wrong.
“As any veteran of the United States they should receive their proper burial honors,” Bures said. “That's what were trying to rectify after 102 years.”
Franklin and the Battle for Wilson's Wharf
Little is known about Franklin's early life except that he was born free in New York City in 1840. He enlisted in the Union Navy on Nov. 13, 1863, when he was 23.
The young seaman was assigned to the Union Navy's USS Dawn, a gunboat, as the officers' steward and cook.
According to Cynthia Wilson, a Seattle-based historian who researches Black Civil War…
