Earlier this month there was a graveside ceremony in Reading, Pennsylvania. It was held at the grave of Levi Schlegel, who was a private in the Civl War. Levi was one of the lucky ones to survive that devastating conflict and he lived a long life until he died at age 91 in 1932.
During his Civil War service, Levi happened to have passed through the Fredericksburg, Virginia area and at some point during that transit, he lost a finger ring that had his name, company and regiment engraved on it. It has been said that such rings were the Civil War version of the more modern "dog tag."
John Blue is today a heavy equipment operator from Manassas, Virginia. Mr. Blue is also an experienced hunter of Civil War relics and back in 2005 he was pursuing his hobby in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, Virginia when his metal detector signaled a possible find. What he found was the finger ring of Pvt. Levi Schlegel. It had been missing for 148 years since Levi lost it.
It took Mr. Blue a while to determine that he wanted to try to find any living descendants or relatives of Pvt. Schlegel, but with the help of a genealogist friend the path led to Reading, Pennsylvania where Ernest Schlegel was a member of the Reading Public Library Board. It appears Ernest Schlegel is a distant cousin of Pvt. Levi Schlegel and in early April at the gravesite of Levi Schlegel, Mr. Blue presented Ernest Schlegel with the finger ring of Pvt. Levi Schlegel -- a true Good Samaritan moment!
Read more about Mr. Blue and see photos of the ring, the discoverer, and the ceremonial exchange here.
[If you should choose to adopt this prompt to contribute stories of folks who have gone out of their way to lend genealogy-related assistance to others, I would greatly appreciate a mention to Filiopietism Prism whenever you do so. Thank you! And please do use the same photograph above to illustrate the prompt and show it is adopted from this blog. ;-) ]
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Photograph of the The Good Samaritan sculpture by Francois-Leon Sicard (1862 - 1934). The sculpture is located in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, France. The photograph is by Marie-Lan Nguyen and has been placed in the public domain by her. See, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Good_Samaritan_Sicard_Tuileries.jpg
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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew
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