This story of John Davis and is connection with Bermondsey I had not heard of before.
I’ve posted this even though it was a war fought in America, the central cause of the war, being the dispute over slavery.
In total, the war left between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties.
John Davis realising that he was one of a dwindling band of Civil War soldiers in the capital, founded the London Branch of American Civil War Veterans in the London Mission in Gedling Street, Bermondsey (now the site of the Arnold Estate) in 1910 to ‘look after one another in the few years that remain’. There was a more practical reason to its foundation too; the veterans, who were found around the docks and in Workhouses, could band together and receive help in claiming their pension from the US Government.
John Davis was buried in a deep 30ft grave with several other people at Nunhead Cemetery, on the 23rd of July 2016.
Finally, after 99 years, one of the people buried in this deep 30ft grave is being remembered. Beneath the soil, a US Flag covers his coffin, and the life of a remarkable British Civil War hero and missionary is once again remembered.
JOHN DAVIS AMERICAN CIVlL WAR HERO.
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