Preservation commission looks to the future of Mound City history

MOUND CITY, Ill. — With one major goal achieved, the establishment of a museum, the Mound City National Cemetery Preservation Commission is moving forward.

“We have a name now and the name is inspiring us to move forward,” said Richard Kuenneke, a volunteer with the preservation commission.

The Mound City Historical Museum is in its infancy, but Kuenneke and the other members of the commission are hopeful that someday the museum will tell the tale of Mound City and the important role the town and the area played in the Civil War.

Right now, the commission does not have the manpower to host regular hours at the museum and exhibits are in the process of being developed.

“We’re about to start a GoFundMe to raise money to conduct an archaeological investigation of the yard around the house,” Kuenneke said.

Research and archaeology hold the clues to just how much history is contained both in the house and the ground around it.

The house was built in 1854 by Moses M. Rawlings, who founded Mound City. The house went through various uses before and during the war.

Part of the challenge of determining what those uses were is finding written records. Much of the history in the area was oral history, which was written down at a later date, and subject to embellishment.

“Our house was used as a post office, general store and, according to the oral tradition, a military barracks during the Civil War,” Kuenneke said.

That same oral tradition points to the iron roof of the house being left over from the shipyards that supplied ironclad gunboats to the Union Army.

The Mound City, the Cairo and the Cincinnati patrolled the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers as part of the Union Army’s “brown water Navy,” the boats that patrolled the inland waters during the war.

For Kuenneke, finding concrete answers and archaeological evidence of the use of the residence will help build the effort to get Mound City back on the map as a site of historical significance and interest.

“I’m very passionate about the Civil War heritage of Mound City, specifically the cemetery. That’s my big deal,” he said.

“I’ve started to warm up to this house and its original owner and the whole idea that you have an antebellum structure, a pre-Civil War structure, in a river town. To me, that’s really interesting how everything evolved and grew and how the Civil War changed everything.”

He also sees the effort as something that could help boost the Mound City community.

“Part of me thinks that if we create something people want to visit, that can, in turn, generate additional services, like a coffee shop, for example, something like that,” he said.

Dedicated to preserving and promoting the history of the Mound City National Cemetery and now the Mound City Historical Museum, Kuenneke said he is hopeful that the work will bring Mound City and its important role in the Civil War back into the spotlight.

“It’s a long game. Unfortunately, it won’t happen tomorrow, but I am really optimistic that it can and will happen,” he said.

For more information on the Mound City Historical Museum GoFundMe, go to www.moundcitynationalcemetery.org or the group’s Facebook page at Mound City National Cemetery Preservation Commission Inc.