Imagine being a Union soldier, but being incorrectly identified as a Confederate for 145 years. Thus was the plight of Private Jacob Pfeiffer of New York. Not only that, but he was misidentified as Confederate Private George Piper.
The August 10th Raleigh News & Observer reports that this situation has been cleared up as a new marker was put at Pfeiffer's grave.
Private Pfeiffer grew up on a farm in Manhattan (farm on Manhattan?) and was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg and believed to be a Confederate soldier for all these years until Civil War historian Charles Purser of Raleigh discovered his true identity. Purser has written a book about the cemetery's Confederate dead called "A Story behind Every Stone."
A New York historian helped with the identification and Purser says he couldn't have accomplished this without a lot of help from the internet.
You can see the names Piper and Pfeiffer might have been confused in the not-too-specific efforts to determine bodies back in the Civil War.
Perhaps Purser is the Unknown Midnight Creeper Who Decorates the Grave of Raleigh's Last Confederate Defender Every Year. --B-R'er
The Battle of Fort Fisher, N.C.
