Inland Seas, Summer 1950, p. 15

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up. The body of Lieutenant Eveleth had been identified and had been buried beneath a cluster of small pines at the edge of a sand dune, the spot marked only by a blazed sapling. Schoolcraft commented that a more adequate tribute of respect was due Lieutenant Eveleth from his brother officers, and expressed the hope that those at Fort Dearborn would yet provide a suitable memorial for him. Although his fellow officers might be thus indifferent, the auditors of the Treasury Department could safely be trusted not to forget the dead lieutenant. Some time before his last mission he had received $1000 in government funds. He had paid Lewis Morgan of Green Bay $50 and had rendered an account of $600 expended for other purposes. Although Eveleth died too soon to know of it, only $99.18 of the latter sum had been approved, leaving almost $850 still charged against him, and payment of the sum that had been approved was being withheld from his widowed and indigent mother until the entire $1000 should be accounted for. Although Lieutenant Eveleth was known to have been notably careful of his expenses while a cadet at the Academy, the question was raised whether at Detroit he had lived more extravagantly than his salary permitted. If not, had he carried the money with him, separated from his personal funds, in which event a presumption might be advanced that it had been lost when he perished in the line of duty, and consequently the loss was chargeable to the Government. How the matter ended, we do not know. Possibly the auditors are still pursuing the claim. More probably, the distressed mother did not live long enough to receive the minute fraction of the amount at stake which even the auditors acknowledged was rightfully due her son. Like the encounter of Captain Knapp with the Hercules the determination of Lieutenant Eveleth’s account still remains a mystery.

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