"John Gaines, Sr. died at 4:40 yesterday afternoon at his home, 231 Willow avenue, after an illness of one week, from pneumonia. The deceased was aged 68 years, 11 months and 2 days, and was born in Page county, Va. The deceased served for four years in the Confederate army. For a number of years he had been a resident of this city, and is survived by his wife and ten children, as follows: John W., Altoona; L.N., Hagerstown, Md.; Mrs. Elizabeth France Beahm of Virginia; Mrs. Carrie V. Miller, Altoona; Mrs. Matilda C. Evans, Wilmore; Mrs. Hattie F. Minor, Mrs. Mary E. Plubell, Thomas M., Charles E. and Robert L., all of this city. He was a member of the Walnut Avenue Methodist church."
Altoona Mirror, Wednesday Evening, 1 June 1910:
"PLACED WREATH ON REBEL GRAVE
"Local Grand Army Men Decorate the Last Resting Place of a Confederate Soldier
"That time heals all wounds and that the boys who carried the Stars and Stripes in '61 have long since ceased to regard as enemies those who carried the Stars and Bars, was very beautifully illustrated on Memorial Day afternoon when a committee of Grand Army men from Post 62 visited Rose Hill cemetery, for the purpose of decorating the graves of the veterans of the Union army and navy buried there.
Sleeping beneath a simply stone in that cemetery is John Gaines, for many years a prominent resident of this city and, who, during the great rebellion, wore the grey, he being one of Lee's men.
When the committee of the Grand Army men made the rounds of the graves there on Monday, Comrade D.E. Edwards, while the rest stood at attention about the little grave, stooped and reverently place a marker and a wreath of flowers on the mound, remembering only that the body interred there was that of a soldier, who fought for what he thought was right, and not that he had fought against the cause they had fought to uphold.
Mr. Gaines, who died February 28 this year was the only Confederate soldier buried here whose grave the Grand Army men knew, though there was another who died many years ago, a former milk dealer in the city."
