VA says it'll fix Confederate soldier's gravestone

ELMIRA, N.Y. (AP) - Federal officials say they'll correct a Confederate soldier's gravestone that was inscribed with the wrong name decades after he died at a Civil War prison camp in New York.

The cemetery administration for the Department of Veterans Affairs tells the Star-Gazette of Elmira that a replacement headstone has been ordered for the grave of Pvt. Franklin Cauble.

His great-great-grandson, Tom Fagart of Concord, North Carolina, said last month that Cauble had been buried in Elmira's Woodlawn National Cemetery under the last name of his friend, Pvt. Franklin Cooper.

Cooper survived imprisonment at Elmira, but Cauble died there in 1864. The wrong last name was inscribed on a granite headstone installed in 1907 when the original wooden markers were replaced.

The VA had previously said it doesn't correct historic gravestones.

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