Long-awaited work on rehabilitating the Soldiers Monument on Delhi’s Courthouse Square began Monday, June 10.
Employees from Lupini Construction of Utica, were busy Monday morning, removing four mortars and fencing around the 49-foot tall monument.
Project manager Chuck Howgate said the monument is the closest one the company is working on this summer.
The antique mortars and metal fence railings were being removed to be sent to a restoration company. When they come back in the middle of July, employees will start working on repairing the stone monument. They will fix all the chips and breaks in the monument and clean it.
“It will look like it originally did when it was dedicated,” he said.
Grass and flowers could be seen growing in the monument’s crevices Monday. Howgate said all the gaps will be fixed.
The gaps allowed water to enter the monument. When the water froze, it expanded and caused some of the cracks in the monument.
The county allocated $500,000 it received from the federal American Rescue Plan Act in February 2022 to repair the monument.
The county contracted Biggs Consulting to do a study. The company took test samples of the concrete holding the monument up to see if it needed to be replaced and found that it was good, so only the monument itself needed repairing.
Howgate said the repairs should be done by the end of September or middle of October.
Monument history
The monument was dedicated in 1906 to the memory of Civil War soldiers, according to Daily Star archives.
According to a history provided by the Delaware County Historical Association, the idea of a monument to honor the soldiers who died during the Civil War came about during the war.
Not much was done until 1896 when Colonel Robert P. Cormack, commander of the England Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, presented the matter of a Civil War monument before his comrades.
A committee was formed, and letters went out to other veteran organizations in the county.
This resulted in $803.63 in money and pledges raised — far short of the cost of a suitable monument. About half of the cost was raised by pledges or donations. The rest would be collected by general tax of the county.
Cormack died in 1903, before he could see the monument erected and dedicated.
According the archives of the Delaware Republican, Cormack’s daughter, Lillian Cormack Gordon, had the honor of pulling the rope attached to the shroud and uncovering the monument at the dedication ceremony Sept. 18, 1906.
Also in attendance were more than 300 veterans of the Civil and Spanish American wars, along with Lt. Gov. M. Linn Bruce of Andes and Gov. Frank Wayland Higgins.
While the monument is dedicated to the memory of Civil War soldiers, dates on the monument — 1776, 1814-1845, 1861-1865 and 1898 — honor other veterans. The monument also lists the battles the Delaware County 144th Regiment fought in — Gettysburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Fort Sumter and Honey Hill.
The monument had been showing its age for several years, and the county started looking at repairing it 20 years ago, however, the county did not receive a grant it applied for, according to Daily Star archives.