This veteran served with Company K of the Southern California Infantry during the War with Mexico.
Henry Leifeld was born in Germany in 1828. Perhaps one day we’ll learn how and why he fought for his adopted country in pre-Gold Rush, pre-statehood California as a teenager. Henry lived nearly a century before his 1926 passing in Placerville. His vandalized military-issued tombstone didn’t remain upright as long as the man it commemorates. The broken monument was laying near its home plot in the Odd Fellows section, adjacent to the service road, overlooking his fellow veterans in the G.A.R. section.
In 2022 Leifeld’s marker was chosen as one of 16 broken headstones deemed threatened and was included in the Save the Graves Headstone Repair project. The broken headstone was reattached to the original base which was found buried in the ground.
Leifeld’s grave marker should now stand tall for another century or two.
