The marker is hard to read in the poor light but it says "KENNETH M. M.G. CO. 139th INF. 35th DIV. DIED IN FRANCE"
Kenneth is buried with his parents, Benjamin Frank Robinson (1863-1912) and Ida Makeever Robinson (1867-1945) in northeastern part of Section G not too far from the striking monument for Benjamin Harris. Also buried in the lot is an infant brother who lived for ten months in 1894. Searching Familysearch I found that the family had moved to Iola, Kansas before 1900 and that Kenneth was born there. He never lived in Rensselaer which is why his name is not on the lists of residents who served in WWI. He shipped overseas in April 1918 as a member of Machine Gun Company, 139th Infantry on the ship Caronia and died in France on December 12, 1918 (after the Armistice) with the cause of death listed as disease. (That info was found on the ancestry.com link from familysearch.) Almost certainly the family bought the cemetery lot when their infant son died and then when other members of the family died, their remains were shipped back to Rensselaer and buried in the family lot. (The lot to the south was owned by Thomas Robinson and I strongly suspect that this was Kenneth's grandfather.)
Kenneth was probably initially buried in France and then after several years his body was dug up and sent back to the States. The Weston Cemetery records say that he was buried on July 31, 1921.
He had two brothers who survived him. Both of them and his mother moved to California where they lived the rest of their lives.
Update: Benjamin Frank Robinson was the son of Thomas and Margaret Parkison Robinson, who are buried in the lot to the south. Further, it was not only Been's family that moved to Iola, Kansas. So also did the families of his brother Joseph and his sister Mary (Mrs Luther Ponsler). See the death notice on Margaret's findagrave memorial.
How and when the decision to return the bodies of American soldiers who were killed in action and/or died of wounds/disease is described toward the end of this article: http://www.historynet.com/rest-in-peace-bringing-home-u-s-war-dead.htm
ReplyDeleteAn excerpt of the pertinent paragraphs:
Standing against all this logic and power were thousands of Americans who demanded that the government bring home their dead. They contended that the government had to do what it had done in wars before. One mother from Brooklyn wrote: “My son sacrificed his life to America’s call, and now you must as a duty of yours bring my son back to me.”
Another begged for her son’s return in terms that illustrated the lasting power of the Good Death ideal: “Pleas send his body home to us as soon as you can and tell me...how bad he was hert and if he had a chance to say eny thing be for he died oh if I could of bin with him.”
Nearly a year after the armistice—two years after the first of Pershing’s troops had been killed—a compromise was forged. The War Department announced in October 1919 that it would survey each of the fallen soldiers’ next of kin. They could choose to bring home remains or have them buried in newly created American military cemeteries in Europe. Ballots were sent to nearly 80,000 families, and in kitchens and living rooms across the country, the bereaved sat down to decide how best to honor their loved ones.
IN LATE 1920, the French finally yielded to American pressure and lifted their ban on the return of bodies. The United States spent the next two years and more than $30 million—$400 million in today’s dollars—recovering its dead. The remains of 46,000 soldiers were returned to the States at their families’ request, while another 30,000—roughly 40 percent of the total—were laid to rest in military cemeteries in Europe.