SNGF: A Veteran's Service and Gravesite

For this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (challenge here), I'm going with my 2nd great-grandfather, John W. Berger.  John was twenty, the son of immigrants, and working the family farm when he enlisted in Company K, 29th Indiana Infantry in October of 1861.  He saw action at Shiloh before being taken seriously ill.  He spent the next four months in a hospital in Nashville before being discharged in December of 1862.

John W. Berger
circa 1866

John went on to become a minister and traveled the world spreading the message of his church (which was later absorbed into the current United Methodist Church) although he never really recovered from his war illness.  He died at the young age of 50 in Oakland, Alameda, California and left behind a widow and nine children, the eldest just eighteen and the youngest a year old (and severely handicapped). John was buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.  His wife joined him there forty years later.

The only marker of the Berger family plot
in Mountain View Cemetery

As you can see, neither John nor his wife Susanna have a headstone, just their surname marking the general plot.  It is a dream of mine to remedy this one day and to especially have John's Civil War service acknowledged.  I have looked into getting a military headstone placed and hope to get the ball rolling before too long.