The death of a Eureka hero in a Bendigo hospital hardly seems to have registered at all in 1858.

There appears to have been hardly a whisper at the time John Joseph, who played such a central role in one of the most important moments of Australia's democratic history, was now lying dead in the White Hills Cemetery. Perhaps no-one thought he was important enough.

So there Joseph lay in an unmarked grave for well over a century until a descendant of another Eureka hero got in touch with the American embassy, which this week unveiled a plaque commemorating Joseph's role.

Perhaps the forgetting of Joseph should not be surprising.

In 1855 even the United States' consul helped each of its compatriots arrested in Eureka's aftermath bar Joseph, a black man.

As historians Jeffrey Atkinson and David Andrew Roberts have observed, Joseph was not even recognised by many as a fellow citizen. "And later accounts of Eureka written by Americans such as Charles Ferguson (who was himself arrested inside the stockade, but not tried) make no mention of him," the pair have written.

Joseph played an outsized role at Eureka, not least because he was the first of 13 rebels to stand trial for high treason, and was carried through Melbourne's streets by cheering crowds when a jury took 30 minutes to find him not guilty.

At the battle itself, Joseph armed himself with a double-barrelled shotgun and was among those to confront advancing redcoats. He is thought to have shot one trooper in the knee as they entered the stockade, fired off a second shot, dropped the gun and started welding a steel-pointed pike.

He eventually surrendered but only after resisting arrest for some time. Some who were there that day said Joseph was probably lucky to escape with his life.

So he was not an inconsequential participant in Eureka or its aftermath.

It is a curiosity, then, that a town with the radical reputation of 1850s Bendigo appears to have failed to lionise the newly dead hero in its midst. It is a shame too that it has taken so long for anyone to lay down a stone at White Hills Cemetery paying tribute to Joseph.

Last Monday, shortly before the plaque to Joseph was unveiled, documentary maker and journalist Santilla Chingaipe told the gathering she had not found any information on who had been at his burial.

"Was he eulogised? And did his loved ones in America ever find out about his death or even about his life in Victoria?" she asked. And what might Joseph have made of the belated attempts to make sure he was not forgotten again.

"It's hard to know," Ms Chingaipe told the gathering. But it is nice to think he now knows we finally recognise just how important he is.

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