Many veterans buried at Saint Paul's Church National Historic Site in Mount Vernon were honored with a walking tour and more on Monday as part of its annual Memorial Day service.

According to site manager David Osbourn, with Saint Paul's Church National Historic Site, around 140 service members dating from colonial times to the Vietnam War are buried on site.

The site holds an annual Memorial Day service highlighting the area's rich history, some of its buried veterans and one special honoree.

This year, Pvt. Peter Leier, who served in the Union Army during the Civil War, was honored.

Osbourn says he was contacted by Leier's descendants who had been searching for his grave for years.

"He was born in Germany. He emigrated to our country before the Civil War. He lived here in Mount Vernon, in the German neighborhood of West Mount Vernon near the Yonkers border, and he volunteered for and fought in the 54th New York Volunteer Infantry regiment," Osbourn said.

Alongside the site's records and the families' archives, they were able to piece together Leier's life, over 150 years after his passing.

"Personally to me this is one of the most satisfying things...as these families come back here and either they haven't seen each other in years or maybe they don't know each other but they have this common bond to an ancestor whose buried here who in their own small way is apart of our nation's history," Osbourn added.

The site's living historian, Michael Grillo, also led a guided tour of some of the service members' graves, reading short biographies of the departed. One being Dr. Charles Taft, a surgeon in the Union Army, who was in Ford's Theatre the fateful night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

"He [Dr. Taft] hops over the railing, they lift him up the balcony, he's calling all the shots, he's taking care of the president in a tavern across the street because he wouldn't make the journey back to the White House," said Grillo.

The event concluded with songs from the Civil War and the American Revolution period.

Over 50 people attended the event, including eight of Leier's descendants.