A winter’s day discovery begins a journey
Search continues for a Flint Hill soldier’s Purple Heart
Awinter’s day and time to sort through bins long stashed away in storage. An envelope, a folder, a piece of paper, another folder with a picture frame… and what slipped out?
A framed certificate from the United States of America awarding the Purple Heart to a fallen soldier. My sister, Penelope Hopkins Ferguson, discovered the Purple Heart Certificate given to Army Pvt. Francis Hanson Cary’s family after his death on July 18, 1944 during the Normandy Campaign near the French Town of Vire.
Francis was our cousin by marriage. Penelope’s and my aunt, Maxine — our mother Anna’s sister — married Frank Cary of Flint Hill in 1936 and became Francis’s stepmother. Francis’s mother was Virginia (Bessie) Ferguson Cary.
He was in Company C of the 116th regiment of the 29th Division — sadly known for its losses in the D-Day invasion.
The Virginia town of Bedford hosts the National D-Day Memorial Museum. The museum of the 116th Regiment, also known as the Stonewall Brigade, is located in Verona. This regiment is the oldest continuous service regiment in the Virginia National Guard and seventh oldest in the U.S. Army, dating from 1742.
In 1948, Francis’s remains were exhumed from his grave in France and buried in the Flint Hill
Methodist church cemetery. A local newspaper at the time reported on the graveside service held in his honor.
Penelope and I were both surprised and excited by the certificate, but the medal itself has not been found. In trying to piece together the events and locate the Purple Heart, we uncovered a number of resources that honor recipients of the Purple Heart and other medals.
Two organizations of note are Purple Hearts Reunited and the 116th Infantry Regiment Foundation. Purple Hearts Reunited, located in Vermont, returns lost, stolen, and misplaced military medals of valor to veterans or their families, in order to honor their sacrifice to the nation.
Penelope’s possessing Francis’s certificate made it easier for Purple Hearts Reunited to establish that our family could receive a medal. In fact, PHR sent us one, but we still do not know whether Francis’s mother Bessie Ferguson Cary and her subsequent relatives hold Francis’s actual metal — that is part of the journey as we are attempting to discover.
Penelope, our cousins, and I are seeking information about Francis Cary, his mother, and her family, who may be in the Farmville area, and information surrounding Francis’s Purple Heart.
We hope to honor him at some time in the future with a grave-side presentation of the Purple Heart. In the meantime, we will have the Purple Heart insignia chiseled into his gravestone to prove to the world his bravery in battle, with or without the physical medal.