Civil War Soldier's Remains Located
Confederate Army Officer Is Buried In Tequesta.
November 25, 2005|By Jeff Alexander The Jupiter Courier
The whereabouts of the missing Confederate soldier are finally known.

He's in Tequesta.

For years, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which tracks locations of burial plots of deceased Confederate soldiers, knew that a soldier was buried at Riverside Memorial Park but didn't know the name or exact location, group President Zee Porter said.

"The cemetery had a card for him, but didn't know he was a Confederate soldier," Porter said. "It took us about four or five months to track him down."

Research by Lynn Lasseter-Drake, a Jupiter Pioneer historian and a member of the town's Web committee, along with Riverside documentation, verified that Capt. Edward Harrison Covar was buried in 1910 at Riverside. He served in the South Carolina Infantry during the Civil War.

"I had the information on him, but I thought he was buried down in West Palm Beach," Lasseter-Drake said. "I knew he had a pension and a wife who was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in West Palm Beach."

Lasseter-Drake was led to think, erroneously, that he was in Woodlawn, too, she said.

According to Drake's research and UDC documentation, Covar enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861 in Aiken, S.C., serving four years in the 7th Regiment of the South Carolina Infantry. In 1865, he was discharged in North Carolina with the rank of captain.

He married Martha Ann Prescott in 1871 and was buried March 14, 1910 in what was then known as Jupiter Pioneer Cemetery and Carlin Estate Private Cemetery, now Riverside Memorial Park.

"There are three Civil War veterans buried in Riverside and Covar is the only Confederate soldier," Porter said.

Forty-two Confederate soldiers' graves statewide have been documented, Porter said.

Covar was honored Saturday in a UDC-sponsored flag-bearing ceremony at Riverside, with his great-granddaughters and cousins attending.

A marker at the southwest corner of Riverside was unveiled. Among the flag-bearers was retiredArmy Brig. Gen. Albin F. Irzyk, who served in World War II as the commander of the 8th Tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division.

The Covar descendants knew nothing about their great-grandfather's gravesite, great-granddaughter Linda Covar Owens of Port St. Lucie said. "I was so excited," she said. "I used to take my aunt and sit her down and have her tell me tales, but she didn't know where he was."

"She would have been so excited," said Saralee Covar, from West Palm Beach.

Jeff Alexander can be reached at jeff.alexander@scripps.com