A ceremony Thursday at Cedar Hill Cemetery added the name of a Civil War soldier, but it would not have happened had the headstone not been found by Gwen Dunn. The Woodville native said the task had been on her mind for years.

The story began in 2006 when Dunn’s friend, Sammy Lou Johnston, asked her to help get a monument for Michel Grimard, a Confederate solider killed in 1863 during the Siege of Vicksburg. Meantime, in Washington state, Lynn Melton, a cousin of Johnston’s husband, had asked a friend to help her get a monument her grandmother wanted for Grimard, her grandfather.

But an unknown person had actually ordered a monument made available through the Veterans Administration. It was made and shipped, but not installed.

Dunn said she discovered that a monument had been ordered from the Veterans Service Office in Natchez. For confidentiality reasons, the office said they couldn’t tell her who ordered it or where it was.

So three months ago, Dunn and her husband came to Vicksburg. They went to cemeteries and looked through listings — all to no avail. Dunn said she met Venable Moore, sexton at Ceder Hill Cemetery, “and I told him I live a long, long ways away. This has been on my mind since 2006. I said I have to end it because, once I tell somebody I’m going to do something, I have to do it.”

Moore told her about Wayne McMaster, a leader in the Sons of Confederate Veterans Gen. John C. Pemberton Camp 1354 in Vicksburg.

“If these people can’t help you, you’re just going to have to leave the mystery unsolved,” Dunn said Moore told her. McMaster suggested they go to Vicksburg Monument Company, and that’s where they found the marker, covered in grime and mold after having set there for four years.

“I liked to have passed out,” Dunn said. “That man’s monument has been moved and it was so dirty, we had to pay to have it cleaned.”

Dunn said she enjoyed every minute of the search, met lots of nice people along the way, and would do it over again.

“Vicksburg has the most friendly, nice, helpful people of any town that I’ve been to — and trust me, I’ve been all over the world,” she said. “Had it not been for the people being nice and helpful, I never would have found it.”

During Thursday’s ceremony, Melton, who flew in from Seattle with her husband, introduced her family members in attendance. Tina Johnston, Sammy Lou Johnston’s daughter-in-law, sang “Amazing Grace” and the “Lord’s Prayer.” McMaster then read a poem. Bryan Dabney, pastor of St. John’s Anglican Orthodox Church, and Layne Tedder, 13, son of Vicki and James Tedder, lifted the Mississippi flag that was draped over the granite stone.

McMaster thanked those in attendance for honoring their ancestor and said he was impressed with the turnout.

“I thought it was so meaningful, and it was wonderful to have all these people,” Melton said. “It was such a hospitable group. People we didn’t even know came.” She added that it was “absolutely wonderful” to have the headstone finally in place: “I told my husband I wasn’t going to die until we did this.”

Dunn said she couldn’t put into words the feeling of having solved the mystery and seeing the monument where it should be. “It is just very rewarding,” Dunn said. “I’m just really, really happy about the whole thing.”

The section of Cedar Hill where soldiers who died of diseases and wounds are buried was designated “Soldiers” rest after it was created during the war. Detailed burial records were kept, but lost.

In the 1960s, a partial list giving the name, rank, company, unit and date of death was found with about 1,600 names of the estimated 5,000 soldiers buried on the hillside. That led to creation of individual markers through the VA program and placement of the markers in the 1980s using funds raised by Confederate heritage organizations.

As more names have been discovered, monuments have been added. The last large group was 72 stones added in 1998.