George "Fisher" Moyers received a respectful salute when he died in 1936, his obituary asserting Canonsburg's last Civil War veteran earned his nickname when he joined the Union Army at 13.

Early in the war, the obituary said, the boy was fishing in his native Bedford County when he asked to accompany passing soldiers. "All right, fisher," one reportedly said, "come along."

Bunk, says Gina Nestor, Canonsburg's resident Civil War detective.

Nestor, 48, has spent months crawling among tombstones and poring over aged archives to compile a more accurate record of Canonsburg residents who served in the Civil War, bringing credit to some, deflating a few. Her painstaking research on 250 soldiers will appear in the May issue of The Jefferson College Times, newsletter of Jefferson College Historical Society.

She found misspelled names, cases of mistaken identity and other errors in respected source material from the Civil War period. She found some mistakes repeated when historians used each others' work. She found inaccurate dates on tombstones. Under her scrutiny, tall tales collapsed like the Rebel line at Gettysburg.

The Civil War is a favorite topic of professional and amateur historians, with some records as heavily trodden as battlefields. Yet Nestor found so many errors, she asked herself, "Is anything right?"

Nestor hopes her work will aid genealogists and historians. But, she said, correcting the record also is a way to honor those who served.

"It's my passion," Nestor said.

Moyers' obituary indicates he served with Company C, 205th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, from 1861 until the war ended in 1865. But Nestor found enlistment records showing Moyers joined the unit Aug. 26, 1864, when he was 16 and the war nearly over.

She said a stream-side recruitment in Bedford County was unlikely. Service records showed Moyers, who moved to Canonsburg after the war, and an older brother, Abel, enlisted together in neighboring Blair County.

Then there's "Maj." James P. Merriman, whose 1911 obituary said he was "fired with patriotism" and "bore a gallant part in the many bloody battles" of Company D, 10th Pennsylvania Reserve Regiment, a unit recruited at Jefferson College in Canonsburg.

"This is another bogus story," Nestor said.

While the company fought many battles, Merriman wasn't present. Nestor found other historians' research and service records showing Merriman left the company because of illness Dec. 11, 1861, six months after he enlisted, never to return.

"He never saw battle," Nestor said.

Merriman wasn't a major, either, militarily speaking. He was a musician, or drum major, dating to his prewar days with a local militia, Nestor said.

Nestor said descendants of Moyers and Merriman might not appreciate her diligence. But descendants of other soldiers, such as the heretofore unnoticed Frank Iams, might consider themselves indebted.

In August 1862, Iams joined a second unit raised at Jefferson College, Company G, 140th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment. He was promoted to corporal in April 1864 and died at Totopotomoy, Va., a month later.

But Iams isn't listed in Samuel P. Bates' five-volume "History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865," considered the definitive contemporary account. In a mix-up possibly caused by illegible writing on the original Company G roster, Nestor said, Bates listed Iams as "Frank Jones."

Compounding the insult, the nonexistent Jones received credit for Iams' service in government archives and in Boyd Crumrine's "History of Washington County, Pennsylvania," sources that incorporated Bates' work, Nestor said.

Historians are aware of errors in Bates' work but consider him a trusted, valuable source, said Steve Doell, director of archives at Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center. He said it was helpful when activists such as Nestor refine Bates' work.

Nestor traced her interest in history and genealogy to her immigrant father, Eugene Reynier. About 60 when his daughter was born, Reynier took the girl to Oak Spring Cemetery to see her grandmother's grave and regaled her with stories about early 20th-century Canonsburg.

In a roundabout way, her research on Civil War soldiers began when she returned to visit her grandmother's grave. Nestor asked the cemetery manager for records of the oldest burials there and learned none existed.

So she spent summer 2001 crawling on hands and knees through the cemetery's oldest sections, plotting about 1,200 burials on a map and making a list of the interred. When inscriptions proved difficult to read, Nestor found a way to bring them to life.

She scrubbed moss from the stones with water and a stiff-bristled brush, then spread shaving cream on the markers with a squeegee.

The shaving cream filled the indentations left by the engraver, making the inscriptions legible.

In the course of that work, she found 10 Civil War soldiers' graves with missing or damaged, illegible headstones.

Though the cemetery lacked records, she identified them by other means, including a 1938 survey of soldiers' graves by a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Nestor decided to ask the federal government to furnish new markers and encountered a bureaucratic approval process requiring background information on the soldiers.

About the same time, she agreed to assist James Herron, Canonsburg veterinarian and historian, on a book marking the borough's bicentennial.

In addition to writing about churches and cemeteries, Nestor tackled the borough's military contributions through the 1890s, primarily during the Civil War.

Burying herself in military rosters, soldiers' diaries, government archives, military pension records, college catalogs, newspaper stories and census records, Nestor was surprised by conflicting information and fanciful tales.

To separate truth from fiction, fact from error, she launched an exhaustive record search on each Civil War soldier with a Canonsburg connection, 250 and counting.

She compiled so much information Herron couldn't include it all in the bicentennial book and offered her space in The Jefferson College Times.

In the forthcoming issue, Nestor will offer histories of companies D and G and a biographical snapshot of each soldier she studied.

Incorrect information she uncovered in Bates' work and other sources will be noted in parentheses.

In all, Nestor found about 20 name-related errors in Bates' work, ranging from incorrect middle names to wholesale misidentification.

Nestor also found about 20 cases in which Bates or other sources provided incorrect information about Canonsburg solders' movements after they left companies D or G.

Bates reported George Hallas, a private with Company D, transferred to the 191st Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers in June 1864. While he may have been scheduled to make the transfer, Nestor learned, he didn't report to the 191st because of wounds he suffered at Wilderness, Va., on May 6, 1864.

Nestor found wrong dates of death on two or three tombstones. She learned one soldier buried at Oak Spring, J.H.D McGill, enlisted with the 1st West Virginia Cavalry under an alias.

She believes she solved the puzzle of when James Hughes, a sergeant with Company D, died.

Records showed Hughes, wounded May 10, 1864, at Spotsylvania Court House, Va., died June 1 or June 15 that year.

But Nestor found a newspaper article detailing how Hughes' sister, Elizabeth, traveled to his bedside in Washington, D.C., after the death of another sibling in Canonsburg in May 1864.

The article said Hughes died an hour after she arrived, leading Nestor to conclude his death occurred June 1.

Cemetery workers installed the new headstone last week that the federal government provided for Hughes at Nestor's request.

Stones for six other soldiers soon will be installed, and Nestor is trying to get markers for three more.

Nestor said she would continue her research, hoping new information vwill solve remaining mysteries about Canonsburg heroes.

Doell, of the Heinz history center, is among those looking forward to the finished product.

"I just hope she deposits a copy in our library," he said.