A father and son are on a mission to collect and tell the stories of fallen Civil War soldiers from Wellman. Ten-year-old Caedyn Huston and his father, Mike, decided as part of Caedyn’s 4H citizenship project, they would focus on preserving the history and physical tombstones of Civil War veterans buried at Pilotsburg Cemetery. They chose the Civil War as the focus because they have distant family members who fought in the Civil War. Caedyn, who will be going into sixth grade at Mid-Prairie in the fall, tells KCII News about a soldier by the name of Alexander Brawner Jr. who intrigued him, “So, on his enlistment paperwork, he’s actually extremely uneducated. So, uneducated that he couldn’t actually write his name. So, on papers that you’d have to sign, his mark would be an ‘X.’ That’s very interesting, because like I said he left to work when he was 10 and didn’t really have any time to be educated.” The two are currently finishing up cleaning the headstones of the 11 soldiers and are creating a book to keep records of their research. A copy of the book will be sent to the Wellman Heritage Society for public viewing. Mike thinks a cemetery tour featuring these headstones could provide some insight and appreciation to the history of Wellman during the Civil War.