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Stafford woman digs up past, finds burial spot of relative and Civil War veteran

Free Lance-Star - 8/27/2018

Aug. 27--In an effort to fill a void, a Stafford County woman dug up her family roots.

In the process, Sherry Cooper discovered the name of an unknown little girl in a picture that hung in her childhood home ever since she can remember. That girl turned out to be her great-aunt, who was interred in a local, unmarked burial plot with a Civil War veteran and his family.

On Sunday afternoon, Cooper and about a dozen others gathered to lay headstones for the five people buried on the property, owned by Alice Stewart, along Brooke Road in Stafford.

Several men dug shallow holes and tamped the headstones into the earth in a shady grove near the two-lane road.

"I'm gonna play taps," said Cooper, a 51-year-old lifelong Stafford resident with a long list of local relatives. She held up her smartphone and the bugle sounded.

Everyone grew silent. Men removed their hats.

When the song ended, Cooper wiped away tears from under her glasses.

"That makes me cry every time," she said.

A dark time led Cooper to the search that turned up the burial spot of the Staples family and Doris Purks, who died on Jan. 7, 1917.

Purks was an aunt of Cooper's mother, Phyllis Watson Cooper.

It was the death of Cooper's mother in 2014 that sparked her interest in the family tree.

Through extensive research online and at the county courthouse, along with help from her extended family, Cooper found where Purks was buried.

Cooper said she'd long wondered about the identity of the young girl in a photo that has always hung at the family's Stafford home where she grew up and currently lives with her father.

The girl turned out to be Purks. The framed photo of the toddler set on an easel next to the headstones Sunday. Three headstones were placed at the spot--one specially made by a relative of Cooper; one for Peleg Staples; and another for his wife, Mary Ella, and two of the couples' sons, William and Henry.

"It's been up there a long time," Cooper said of the picture from her childhood home.

"Forty years," her father, Horace Cooper, said with a chuckle. "I never did know who that was."

Purks was just a year and three months old when she died. Cooper said the death certificate pointed to complications with indigestion as the cause of the toddler's demise.

Cooper said they don't know the exact location of the burial site, but it was on the Stafford property, which at the time served as a farm owned by the Staples.

The parents of Doris Purks--Alfred and Mammie--were friends with Peleg and Mary Ella Staples.

Peleg Staples fought for the Union in the Civil War. He was injured in the Battle of Gettysburg and a second time later during the war. He died in June 1917 at the age of 72.

Mary Ella Staples died just more than three years later at the age of 70. Both of their sons died earlier. Henry died in July 1889, less than a month after his birth, and William in 1907 at the age of 26.

Sherry Cooper said Mary Ella and William each was struck and killed by a train.

According to findagrave.com, one of the tools Cooper used in her research, Mary Ella was gravely injured while pushing several grandchildren off the tracks to safety.

There also is a connection between Doris Purks and their untimely deaths.

Alfred Purks worked for the railroad, and Cooper said many in her family have and still do work for railroad companies.

Despite not knowing the exact spot where her great-aunt is buried, she noted an apple tree near where the headstones were set.

According to family, the burial spot was near the "old apple tree."

"I really didn't know much about my family," Cooper said, recalling why she started the search following her mother's death. "I did a lot of digging."

Part of that digging involved contacting the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which donated the headstone for Peleg Staples.

While her mother's death prompted her search, Cooper added that she also did it so her 13-year-old daughter, Brooke, will know the family history.

"I want her to know," she said.

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(c)2018 The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.)

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