(Do not confuse Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery with Jefferson City National Cemetery.)
The bodies of the soldiers that were killed in the Centralia Massacre (taken from the train and killed) were first buried at Mexico, MO. They were relocated after the war to St Louis at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.
The Massacred soldiers were buried in individual graves at Jefferson Barracks, some under the name of UNKNOWN. To verify known location go to:
http://gravelocator.cem.va.gov/j2ee/servlet/NGL_v1
Type in a few known names that were killed in the Massacre:
* Arnold, J. K.
* Brown, William K.
* Carpenter, C. G.
* Williams, Oscar G.
And you will see that they are located at Jefferson Barracks at St. Louis. One listed interment is Thomas Goodman who is known to have survived and Martin Trail is interred as Martin Frail. There were 52 total Union soldiers reburied at St Louis from Mexico. At least 34 have been found to be listed at UNKNOWN. As no specific burial information has been found for James W. Thomas, he is probably one of those buried as UNKNOWN. Or maybe buried in Thomas Goodman’s site – a miss writing on names during paperwork.
(I, too, am a little leery about him being buried at Fee Fee Cemetery. Someone would need to physically go there and view the headstone – if it is found out, please let me know.) I have not had time to correlate the removal number of the soldiers at Mexico to the ones at Jefferson Barracks. If enough info is found, it might be possible to identify some of the UNKNOWNS from Mexico.
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The bodies of the soldiers that were killed at the Battle of Centralia (a couple of miles south of Centralia after the Massacre at Centralia) were initially buried at Centralia and later relocated to the Jefferson City National Cemetery at Jefferson City. The killed soldiers from the Centralia Battle are in a mass grave under a Memorial. Some of the soldiers were taken back home by relatives before they were transferred to Jefferson City.
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An idea of where to find more information is at NARA. There are records of letters received from relatives in regard to the burial location of their loved one. This is a hit and miss deal as it would depend on whether someone wrote a letter. I had a researcher look up some names for me once (a different project) and I found that one guy's immediate family knew for a fact that he was reinterred at Jefferson Barracks after the war and wanted to know the location. As no listing by name has been found there, he too was buried as an UNKNOWN.
Craig Asbury