COLUMBIANA, Ohio - Nearly 1,000 veterans are buried in the Columbiana Cemetery, dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War.

It was recently discovered that some of the veteran headstones were illegible or severely damaged. Sherrie Nordquist, who is the location coordinator for Wreaths Across America made the discovery while walking the cemetery last year.

"Some of the tombstones you can't even read," said Sherrie Nordquist. "A lot of them are civil war, they're very, very old."

"We needed to do something here in the old part of the cemetery and it desperately did need done," said Deborah Firestone-Himes." A lot of the stones were broken, damaged, they had a lot of years of neglect."

Nordquist decided to asked American Legion Post 290 in Columbiana to help make sure the veterans get the recognition they deserve.

"This is important," said Ken Allcorn, Commander of American Legion Post 290. "These stones were in bad shape and they needed replaced."

"You're supposed to teach children that when they lay the wreath to say the person's name and thank them for their service. You can't thank a person that you can't read," Nordquist said.

The replacement process wasn't easy. Nordquist enlisted Firestone-Himes, an auxiliary member and historian along with several others to help research what was needed to get the headstones replaced.

Background information, military service records and family ties all had be submitted to the Veterans Administration for consideration. To help figure out who the damaged stones belonged to, Firestone-Himes used her cemetery inscription book from 1976 to help.

"With that book, you went row by row and you could figure out who it was," Firestone-Himes said. "It was still a little hard, but you started from there. You had a piece of information that you could begin with and then we put the puzzle together."

The VA ended up approving the replacement of 26 headstones of veterans from the Civil War, War of 1812 and World War I. The granite stones were replaced at no cost. O.T. Beight and Sons is handling the removal and installation and even burying the old stones in the footer of the new ones.

"The VA will replace them one time and none of these had ever been replaced before so it worked out well," Nordquist said.

This project was about more than just replacing headstones. It was a way for them to say thank you to the veterans who are buried there. For their service, for their sacrifice and to be honored as heroes for generations to come.

"Say like Memorial Day, we put flags on the markers and we want people to see who it was, what war they fought in," Allcorn said.

There was a small cost of $150 to remove and replace each headstone. The legion is paying for that but they welcome any donations to help defray the cost. The plan is to now look at other cemeteries in the area and try to replace other damaged headstones of our Valley's bravest.

Here are the stones getting replaced: 

War of 1812: Daniel Hurtman

Civil War: Joseph C. Bacon, William H. Barger, William C. Beck, James H. Bell, Jacob Bowers, Daniel Bushong, Levi C. Chaplin, William Chestnut, Daniel Deemer, Josephus DeHoff, John Flickinger, David Havil, Daniel Hisey, John Dixon Holloway, James Howell, Wesley Johnston, George Kipp, Samuel R. Lindsay, Taylor Reed, Nicholas Wining, William A. Woods, Benjamin Wright. 

World War I: Charles H. Faulk, John F. Mentzer, Jesse Oberholtzer.