The final resting place of a Black Civil War veteran is resurrected in Gary

A worker uncovered more than just a broken 85-year-old headstone in Gary’s Oak Hill Cemetery recently.

Cracked off its base, the buried marker bears the name of a former Kentucky slave set free by his owners after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

His somewhat Forrest Gump-like career in a Kentucky Black infantry unit was memorialized in a 17-volume “Slave Narratives” collection produced during the Great Depression by the Federal Writers Project, which provided work for unemployed writers.

Indiana University Northwest archivist Jeremy Pekarek discovered the story of John Eubanks while doing research for the upcoming Juneteenth holiday that commemorates the end of slavery.

In his lifetime, John Eubanks witnessed a cavalcade of historical events and progress from inventions like the telephone, automobile, and airplane.

When Eubanks was born in 1839 in Glasgow, Ky., Martin Van Buren was the nation’s eighth president.

When he died at his son’s home in Gary at age 98, Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House, the 32nd president. Eubanks cast his first presidential vote for Ulysses Grant, but his personal favorite was Teddy Roosevelt.

When Federal Writers Project field writer Archie Koritz, of Valparaiso, went to Eubanks’ Gary home in 1937, the former slave and Union veteran shared a fascinating story that only his family knew.

Eubanks told Koritz he was given to Becky Eubanks at about age 6 as a wedding gift from her slave-holding family when she married Tony Eubanks. As was the custom, young John took the last name of his new owners. He grew up picking cotton barefoot and freezing in the winter.

Koritz wrote two narratives, one in the third person, and a second in the first person that quotes Eubanks in his own dialect.

During the interview, Eubanks’ daughter asked him if the Eubanks family mistreated him. He answered no.

“Becky would’n let Tony whip her slaves who came from her fathah’s plantation. ‘They ah my prophty,’ she say, ‘an’ you caint whip dem.’ Tony whipt his othah slaves but not Becky’s.”

Because Kentucky was a border state that leaned toward the Union, the 21-year-old Eubanks was released in 1863 after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Tony Eubanks placed a condition on his release — he had to join the Union army’s colored regiment so he wouldn’t have to pay a fine for letting Eubanks run off.

Eubanks told Koritz he walked 35 miles to Bowling Green, Ky., where he joined a unit that was part of Gen. William “Tecumseh” Sherman’s regiment.

As part of the 108th “colored infantry,” Eubanks began Sherman’s famous march through Georgia but along the way, his unit was recalled and sent elsewhere.

In 1863, his Company K unit fought in Indiana when Confederate Gen. John Morgan began a raid on southern Indiana to rouse Confederate sympathies.

After heavy fighting by Black soldiers and other Union divisions, they forced Morgan into a retreat back to the south.

In 1864, Eubanks was a member of the Black garrison based at Fort Pillow, Tenn., about 40 miles north of Memphis.

With 1,500 soldiers, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest savagely attacked the 567 Union troops at the fort. During the battle, nearly 200 Black soldiers died and historians said the massacre became a rally cry for the former slaves and strengthened their resolve.

Eubanks recalled he was in several skirmishes but said “never onct got a skinhurt.”

Forrest went on to become the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in 1867.

After the Confederacy surrendered, Eubanks remembered shouting and cheering in his unit. He said he was sent to load cannons on boats to be shipped up the river.

When he returned to Glasgow, he reunited with his mother and family who were freed.

Soon, he met his future wife Julia Lander who he married in 1866 at age 26. The couple had 12 children, including two who eventually moved to Gary.

Eubanks worked on a farm and then moved to Louisville to work in a lumber yard. In 1924, two years after his wife died, he came to Gary to live with family members.

After Congress passed the 15th amendment granting Black men the right to vote, Eubanks remembers casting his first vote for Ulysses Grant in 1872. He told Koritz he continued to vote in every election until old age halted him from walking to the polls.

By 1926, Eubanks was just one of three surviving Civil War vets of the Grand Army of the Republic living in Gary.

Eubanks was the lone Civil War veteran honored in Gary’s Memorial Day parade in 1937, an era of rampant segregation as Blacks were banned from white schools and restricted in areas they could live.

He died a year later and family members buried him in Oak Hill Cemetery. His obituary listed 15 grandchildren and 35 great-grandchildren.

IUN’s Pekarek also tracked down Eubanks’ biographer, Archie Koritz, who graduated from Valparaiso Law School in 1928.

Koritz became a member of Young Democrats of Porter County and ran for a judgeship in 1940. He lived on Lincolnway in lodging that’s now the Pour House, a brew pub.

Pekarek said he believes Koritz died in 1996 and is buried in McLean County, Illinois.

As the decades passed, John Eubanks’ gravesite became invisible, its once gleaming white headstone broken off and swallowed up by grass.

Patrick Cave, a member of the Valparaiso-based chapter of the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War, searched for Eubanks’ grave recently.

He found the approximate site from the cemetery office, but couldn’t find the grave.

A worker told him it had likely sunk after it cracked off its base.

A few days later, the worker unearthed the grave and placed a reflector on its site.

“I had a bucket and brushes and I got some water and went down and brushed him off,” said Cave, of Valparaiso.

He gave the worker a copy of an order from the government for the veteran’s headstone replacement. It’s now temporarily standing and awaiting replacement.

Cave placed a medallion signifying Eubanks’ service in the Grand Army of the Republic and a U.S. flag stands above it.

Meanwhile, Pekarek is continuing his research on Eubanks that will be showcased during IUN’s Juneteenth celebration.

He found a descendent of Eubanks’ original Kentucky plantation family who lives in Georgia. She’s doing her own family research.

“Her grandmother may have known John,” said Pekarek who hopes to find some of Eubanks’ surviving family members who may still live in the Gary area. He would like to find memorabilia or stories about Eubanks.

“There are a lot of gaps in his legacy that I want to build on,” he said.

Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.