Cemetery just memorial?

FAIRFIELD — Curtis Allen knows where the bodies are buried.

Or, in this case, where they are not.

Allen, who has spent 15 years combing through Civil War-era records, journals and documents, cautions genealogists who trust the veracity of the information on the 84 markers at the Camp Floyd-Stagecoach Inn State Park cemetery.

What has his study of the plots uncovered?

Allen says markers aren't over the grave sites, not everyone marked as buried at the cemetery is actually buried there, and some soldiers who have markers bearing their names never even served in Johnston's Army.

Historians have long been fascinated with Fairfield, where Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston led soldiers to Utah in 1858 to establish what was the U.S. Army's largest encampment in the country and thereby squelch any conflicts between Mormon settlers and others.

The camp was abandoned and the troops dispersed to Civil War duties in 1861.

"It should be cleared up. I think they ought to recognize and make it known that the cemetery is really just a memorial.

Although attractive and well kept, the cemetery does not represent factual history," said Allen.

According to Allen, many of the soldiers who are on lists of those buried at the Fairfield park died before the site for the camp had been selected.

Also, he says, some were never involved with the Utah expedition, and there is no reason for their names to be on a marker at this cemetery.

"Some soldiers died at Camp Floyd but are not represented by markers," he said. "Finally, because no burial records have been found and all surface evidence of grave locations had been obliterated before the restoration efforts, the markers are not placed over actual known burial sites."

Mark Trotter, director of the state park, isn't too concerned about Allen's findings.

Trotter said workers who restored the cemetery in 1950 did the best they could given the resources available at the time.

The original wooden markers were destroyed by a wildfire in 1910, and no sexton or burial records have ever been located, making it necessary to simply lay the markers in order according to death date.

"They're here. The bodies are here. They start at this end and work this way," Trotter said, standing over Sgt. Ralph Pike's grave marker.