Danielle Russell devotes time to a project she started in high school

By Keira Silver

Danielle Russell stands next to a headstone of a veteran at Gavilan Hills Cemetery. She is a senior at Gettysburg College and plans to attend graduate school for her Ph.D., majoring in 19th Century United States History with a concentration in Civil War Era studies.
Photo courtesy Danielle Russell

For Danielle Russell, having a career in something other than history was never an option. The Christopher High School grad always loved learning about America’s past.

Born in Washington state, Russell and her family moved to Sunnyvale where they lived for about four years. After that, she grew up in Gilroy for about 12 or 13 years where she went to Luigi Aprea Elementary, Brownell Middle School, and then Christopher High School, graduating in 2021.

Her passion for history, specifically Civil War studies, began during middle school. Russell originally studied American Revolution studies and Civil War Era studies. During seventh grade, Russell studied genealogy. Her interest in 19th century American history continued into high school. That’s when she began studying local war veterans in Gilroy.

“It was my sophomore year of high school that I started getting involved with this project,” she said. “I had originally wanted to volunteer at the (Gilroy) Historical Society, and I was too young. My mom told me to reach out to the Veterans Hall.”

Her mom placed her in contact with Christine West, the executive director at the time for the Veterans Hall. West gave Russell an artifact collection from a veteran who served during World War II. Russell’s assignment was to learn what she could about the artifact collection.

“Being interested in Civil War Era studies, I said I’d like to see if we have any Civil War soldiers out here,” she said. “There has to have been some who traveled out here. So, I just started walking the cemetery . . . I would go to Gavilan Hills Cemetery after school or on the weekends.”

If there was any grave that had a headstone that looked like the veteran might have served during the Civil War, she wrote down the information from the marker and went home and researched it.

“Within the first two months, I identified about 30 Civil War veterans,” she said. “I’ve continued working on that up until now, and I’m still working on it. I think we’re about 64 right now, so the initial number has doubled.”

Her work on the documentation project impressed the Gilroy Foundation so much they awarded the up-and-coming historian with several prestigious scholarships when she graduated from Christopher. She received the Don Christopher $10,000 Scholarship as well as the Don Christopher $20,000 Scholarship. She also received the Linda Burnett Scholarship, and the SakaBozzo Scholarship.

Russell is a rising senior at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. She is doing her senior project on one of the veterans whom she identified in Gavilan Hills Memorial Park, a man named George Washington Kirk. She hopes to continue this for her dissertation.

“That’s absolutely fascinating to have that connection, even though it’s so far away,” she said.

Russell noticed some of the veterans she had identified did not receive wreaths or flags during holidays. Noting that was a “problem” in honoring the people who fought for their country, she decided to do something about it.

She went back to West at the Veterans Hall and acquired the original maps of the cemetery. She divided the cemetery into four quadrants and divided that into twelve rows with sides A and B.

“I started making lists, distributing them as much as I could,” she said. “I was trying to make sure a lot of these men, a lot of whom had not gotten wreaths for an incredibly long time even if they had government issued stones, making sure they got both Wreaths Across America and then the flags for Veterans Day and Memorial Day.”

Russell said she has “adopted” the fallen veterans she has cared for.

“I grew quite attached to some of them,” she said.

Russell plans to attend graduate school and then go for her Ph.D., majoring in 19th Century United States History with a concentration in Civil War Era studies.

“I want to be a professor,” she said. “I’ve had some absolutely fantastic, phenomenal professors at Gettysburg, who have doubled if not tripled my love for the field and studying and researching. I would love to give that same passion to my students in the future.”

Russell knew she needed to attend college at Gettysburg. She enjoyed the Civil War Institute at the facility, and she attended their summer conference in 2019, she said.

She attributes much of her immersion to Gettysburg College to her mother, Debbie Russell, who emailed some of the scholars for introductions. Her parents and grandparents were extremely supportive about her goals and aspirations to become a history professor.

Russell is now working on another project about her ancestor who was on the doomed ocean liner Lusitania that sank after being torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1915. She wrote a paper about this subject for her World War I class, which led to one of her professors at Gettysburg College trying to help her possibly get her paper published.

With all of her projects, Russell believes the support of her family, friends, and community has contributed to much of her success.

“In all the research I’ve done, it really has started with the support I got back home and with this project,” she said. “The support I’ve received has been instrumental to everywhere I’ve gone so far. Everyone has your best interests at heart.”

Madeleine Ulman is a fellow student at Gettysburg College. Russell praises her friend for her contributions to the Gilroy project and collecting information for the database, she said.

“Hearing their stories, she has come to love them as much as I do,” she said. “She’s helping me with the project to try and preserve their stories.”

Ulman is delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to the project, praising Russell’s passion and love for history that shows through her dedication to historical pursuits including Gilroy’s Gavilan Veterans Project.

“I was eager to assist with this project because of my own love for history and because this project makes important historical information more accessible to the public,” she said in an email. “I always enjoy working with Danielle and I am excited for this project to progress and reach completion in the future.”

Many of Russell’s family’s ancestors served in the Civil War. In modern times, they showed their patriotism in the U.S. Navy and Air Force. This led to her interest in researching veterans.

“Their legacy of service and giving back, that resolve has only strengthened now,” she said. “I am the last person to remember their names and their stories. I have and feel a responsibility to preserve those because I don’t want their stories to die with me. Being able to do that has been a true privilege.”

Keira Silver is a recent Christopher High School graduate. She’ll be attending California State University, Monterey Bay, focusing on a degree in journalism.