You don’t know William Burley. Neither do I. On Presidents’ Day, we have nearly innumerable sources to draw from in contemplating the lives and impacts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Naturally, both are inextricably linked to the story of freedom for all in the United States. Most of us never generate this sort of impact nor the same number of records, but most of us leave a fair amount of traceable and permanent evidence of our existence. But some people of certain eras are almost impossible to trace and leave just the faintest of impressions, if any, on further generations.

Women, indigenous people, black people, and others are systematically underrepresented in census, birth, and death records across most countries and in most ages until the last 150 years. Burial plots at Monticello and Mount Vernon hold the remains of hundreds of the enslaved whose names have been lost forever. New York’s African American Burial Ground is a national monument that commemorates the approximate 15,000 now anonymous black people buried in and around the area, which was rediscovered in 1991. Hundreds of other burial grounds exist around the country with thousands of similarly anonymous men and women.

In honor of their history, today’s post reflects on Private William Burley, 22nd USCT. The post is largely devoid of information about Burley because almost none exists. We know that he served in the 22nd USCT and that he is buried in Lincoln Cemetery in Gettysburg . . . and that’s it. Specifically, we have a record of Burnley being awarded a veteran’s headstone.

We have a notice in the paper wherein Burley is mentioned with Joseph Craig and others as receiving veterans headstones, and we have a nearly blank entry on Find-a-Grave. Census, birth, and death records are either not available or not easily traced to him, and hence, we know nothing of his growing up years, his profession, and whether he married or had children. We know nothing of his relationships with town residents.

Even so, William Burley is more traceable than the tens of thousands of others who lived and died without any record being kept or recovered. This post during Black History Month gives us a chance to contemplate Burley and the lost histories of the unnamed.