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For God and Country by Richard G. Biever But no rifles fire Memorial Day salutes over the fallen soldiers remembered here. No bugles sound Taps. Just 10 American flags and an occasional arrangement of flowers are all these soldiers receive. Just flags, flowers and the unwavering devotion of one Perry County family. For them, caring for what's been called Indiana's most over-looked Civil War cemetery has become a family tradition. "It's just important that somebody should see that they should have a proper resting place," said Pat Irvin, the caretaker of the little riverside memorial. The Southern Indiana REC consumer inherited the secluded stretch of Ohio River bank from her father, Clyde E. Benner. He helped create the memorial 34 years ago. The deep woods and tall bluffs, just outside the tiny town of Magnet, look down on the memorial site today, just as they looked down in August 1865. That's when a steamboat accident, 100 yards out from what was then called the Rono Bottoms, claimed the 10 soldiers. The men were buried in a mass grave along the bank. Its whereabouts is unknown to all but those bluffs. "The actual grave was probably washed away, many, many years ago," Irvin said. Her dad and the Perry County Historical Society erected the memorial in 1965, capping the county's Civil War centennial commemorations. Three hundred people attended the dedication almost a hundred years to the day after the accident. Caring for the 10 markers, Irvin said, became one of her father's passions and part of the family. "My Dad was awfully proud of this, awfully proud," she said. "He didn't think twice about donating this little dab of land to erect this." When Benner died in 1985, his 80 acres of land was divided among his four daughters. They drew their 20-acre lots from a pot. "When I pulled out my slip, I thought 'Uh-oh,'" Irvin said. She knew she'd gotten the parcel with the memorial. "The job came with the territory," she said. But caring for the site hasn't been a chore for her family. The site requires little maintenance because so little grows under the dark summer canopy of green. They tend it and tidy it up, cut weeds and pick up sticks. A few years ago, she and her husband, Darryl, framed the stones with a cedar split-rail fence and planted hostas and ferns. Stopping by and tending to the memorial provides Irvin a quiet, gentle link to her dad. "Out of respect for God and country you should take care of it," she said. "You take care of it for the men. You take care of it for Dad." Odyssey of the Argosy Most of the soldiers were from the 70th Regiment of the Ohio Infantry. They had just been mustered out. War-torn and weary, they were probably anxiously looking forward to the joyous reunions awaiting up around a couple hundred more miles of bending river. They probably also were reflecting on the previous four years of war as the river towns slowly went past. The war was over. The Union was saved. And unlike so many of their brethren, they were going home alive. Behind them were some of the most fierce and important battles of the Civil War. The 70th Ohio regiment had been part of a division under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman that saw action at Memphis, Vicksburg, Jackson, Chickamauga, Chattanooga. They were part of the grand advance upon Atlanta and the march through Georgia. Suddenly that summer afternoon, a storm blew up on the river. To escape the driving rain and wind, many men gathered around the boat's boilers. As Argosy No. 3 approached the bends around Rono, the boat was swept up in a tremendous gust of wind and swell of water. The former gunboat heaved toward the Hoosier shoreline and struck rocks beneath the surface. The concussion caused the mud drums beneath the boilers to explode. Steam and boiling water spewed toward the rear of the boat, scalding 12 men. Between 30 and 40 others jumped overboard to escape. From here, news accounts from the time and from more contemporary sources vary on the actual details of that tragic day. Discrepancies exist about the number injured and dead and whether all those who died were buried in the mass grave at the site. All told, as many as 12 men died from the accident 10 at the site and two later in Louisville. At the time, newspapers reported that eight of the dead drowned; two died from the scalding they received and two more were expected to die from burns. Those two men were taken to Louisville where they did die and were buried. Some reports say only nine bodies actually were recovered from the wreckage and the river. The Perry County memorial site pays tribute to nine soldiers identified by name from the 70th Ohio regiment and one unknown soldier believed to be from the 39th Indiana infantry. One of those nine, Martin Long, died the following day from his injuries and joined his comrades in the grave. The first boat to come along after the accident, coincidentally, was the original Argosy. It, too, had seen war service. A riverboat pilot from Vevay had just purchased the boat at an auction downriver and was steaming home. He transported the rest of the regiment to Louisville. There, they boarded another boat and completed their journey. For a few years after the tragedy, there was a little fence around the mass grave at Rono. But passing time and swift floods eventually swept everything away. Gradually people forgot. Rono was renamed Magnet in 1899, but even a name change was not enough to sustain its drawing power. In the century after the war, like so many once-flourishing river towns, Magnet became just a tiny blip on the Hoosier map.
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