New marker hails ancestor who died with Custer

Rusty Wilson leaned on a gravestone last week and watched with satisfaction as a granite monument was erected in Alton Cemetery.

“Weston Harrington, born Feb. 9, 1855, killed in Custer Massacre, June 25, 1876,” reads an inscription on one side of the stone.

Wilson, 65, was seeing the end of a long quest to make sure that Harrington, his greatgreat uncle, won’t be forgotten.

“I’m feeling good right now,” said Wilson. “I always wanted to do something that’s going to live on for a while.”

Harrington was killed in the famous battle that pitted a U.S. Army regiment led by Gen. George Armstrong Custer against Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors in Montana in 1876.

The new granite monument in Alton Cemetery in Prairie Township replicates a marble one so weathered that the Weston Harrington inscription had become illegible.

Wilson, a sports historian and author who recently retired from Ohio State University,

couldn’t abide the thought of wind and rain erasing his ancestor’s service. So several years ago, he started a fundraising campaign to replace the family marker that bore the names of several Harringtons: Weston; Weston’s parents, Paul and Mary; and Weston’s sister, Ella.

He raised about $700 but sent it all back to the donors because it was far short of the goal.

But one donor — an former classmate from Whitehall Yearling High School named Paul Tuhy — was touched by Wilson’s quest. He funded the entire cost, about $8,000, a discounted price offered by Darden Memorials, a subsidiary of Modlich Monument Co. of Columbus.

“I just thought it was the right thing to do,” said Tuhy, who lives in New York City and works in the insurance industry. Wilson describes him as extremely patriotic.

The battle that killed Weston Harrington — called the Battle of the Little Bighorn by the U.S. government and the Battle of the Greasy Grass by some Native Americans — was a defeat for the Army, leaving Custer and about 270 of his soldiers dead. But it prompted intense reprisals by the Army in brutal campaigns that forced Plains Indians onto reservations or killed many of those who resisted.

Wilson said he recognizes the sensitivity of the subject and means no disrespect to Native Americans in recreating the monument to his ancestor.

He doesn’t know many details from Weston’s life. Weston’s father, Paul, was a Civil War veteran. Weston probably grew up hearing tales of his father’s service and might have been influenced by them, Wilson said.

Weston joined the Army at age 17 and had been wounded at least twice before he met his end, at age 21, near the Little Bighorn River.

Perhaps a future historian, walking in Alton Cemetery, will read his marker and be inspired to fill in the details.

Joe Blundo is a columnist at The Dispatch. joe.blundo@gmail.com @joeblundo