Below is some contact information for you to follow-up on. They will be able to assist you with the point of contact (POC) email and phone number for the Chief Historian. I believe the battlefield would be the best central point to consolidate any list of UNKNOWNS for Fort Donaldson.

Fort Donaldson National Park.
Headquarters
(931) 232-5348 ext. 0
Fort Donelson Visitor Center
(931) 232-5706 ext. 0

Mr. Miller is correct in that Greg Biggs is the best POC for efforts in that geographic area. He would know all the local POC's.

I do not believe that a Message Board would be a good venue for the consolidation of lists of KIA's. It could not be practically managed and verified, require a lot of resources (i.e. additional bandwidth, server space, monetary support, etc.), and take away efforts both locally and nationally to take on this and numerous other tasks. These Message Boards are not intended to be of a memorial nature.

I recommend you contact the people at http://www.14thiowainfantry.com/ They should be your first good starting point in all things the 14th Iowa Infantry. You may also want to consider going to any of the search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, Dogpile as examples) and searching for "14th Iowa Infantry".

The strategy for what you envision is at the local level whether it is for a regiment or for a battle. Remember that three times the number of soldiers died as a result of disease than died as a result of combat. Only a minute amount of their remains were ever returned north. Everyone else was buried near the hospital were they died. Don't these soldiers deserve to be remembered too?

Another area I would caution on is multiple stones. A lot of well meaning descendents have made valiant efforts to ensure that their ancestors were memorialized in some way and as a result multiple stones are erected in cemeteries. To add to this confusion, they emplace "memorial" stones that do not actually mark a grave but the decendent believes that their ancestor is (imagine a big hand wave over a cemetery)somewhere in the cemetery but "we just don't know exactly." This is not a problem at the National Cemeteries because everything is tightly controlled by the Veterans Administratino but it is a problem in all others. I have personally ran into this problem at least three different times and quite simply it is frustrating.

A technique that I use is an example and if you go to my website you will find a link labeled "Crossing Over Jordan." This page has the final resing places of the soldiers and veterans of the 39th Georgia.

I hope this helps.

Respectfully,

Gerald D. Hodge, Jr.
War Between the States Historian
Historian: 39th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment
http://39thgavolinfrgt.homestead.com/39thHomepage.html