After 100 years, together again

Myra Kinzie's remains sat at Butterworth
Funeral Home for 110 years. Photo by Doug Cerretti

Butterworth Funeral Home and Cemetery, a provider within the nationwide network of Dignity Memorial (funeral, cremation and cemetery locations) has been working with the volunteers of Missing in America Project (MIAP) over the past two years to identify the unclaimed cremated remains of veterans, spouses of veterans and dependents of veterans who had been left at Butterworth in Seattle and who were eligible to be interred with military honors in a national or state veterans cemetery.

123 of them were recently interred at Evergreen Washelli in North Seattle. See our previous article by Douglas Cerretti

Now Doug provides a follow up to the story

If you remember Myra Kinzie’s (1/8/1851-11/1/1912) unclaimed remains were 110 years old. She was the widow of Capt John Kinzie, US Army and a veteran of the Indian Wars. 

I had wondered what happened to him and I found out in the Spokesman-Review article that was published when the remains were transported to the Washington State Veterans Cemetery. 

John Kinzie (8/19/1850-8/10/1914) died two years after her and his unclaimed remains were interred at Washington State Veterans Cemetery five years ago. 

They had been separated over 100 years at different funeral homes. They are together now.

Commandant Kinzie with ROTC cadets at Washington State College

John and Myra were married April 17, 1872, he was 21 and she was 20 before his graduation from West Point. After retiring from the Army John became ROTC Commandant in 1898 at Washington State College, Pullman, WA (now Washington State University) and afterwards joined the Washington National Guard in Olympia.