Civil War soldier buried in ceremony near Port Orchard

PORT ORCHARD — A Civil War soldier has been buried with full military honors at a cemetery on the Kitsap Peninsula more than a century after he died.

The Kitsap Sun reports that Zachariah M. Stucker was laid to rest in a ceremony Thursday at the Washington Veterans Home outside Port Orchard.

Stucker was a private who served in the Union’s 48th Illinois Infantry Regiment from 1861 to 1865,

His remains were sent to Seattle for cremation after he died in 1914 at the veterans’ home. For unknown reasons his remains sat unclaimed in storage for decades.

A volunteer with the Missing in America Project discovered Sucker’s name on a list of unclaimed remains at the Lake View Cemetery in Seattle and helped set in motion Thursday’s burial services.

Service records show Stucker enlisted in the Union Army in 1861.