Caring For Confederate Graves

Confederate Veteran
Volume 5, Number 4, Page 175
April 1897

Messrs. J. C. Clark, T. M. Emerson, and R. W. Greene report from Manchester, Tenn., concerning Confederate dead in that vicinity. They had a decoration service June 20, 1896, and were addressed by Prof. Terrill, of Terrill College, at Decherd, J. W. Travis, and Elder Adams, of Tullahoma.

They learn that the dead they so honored belonged principally to Ben Hardin Helm's Kentucky Brigade, that one of them was a nephew of John C. Breckinridge, and that the General visited him the day before his death.

Other burial spots are named by them. Near by Guest's Hollow, twelve miles from Manchester and close by the railroad leading to McMinnville, there are twelve graves of Confederates killed August 12, 1862, in an engagement by Forrest with the Eighteenth Ohio and Ninth Michigan Regiments. Perhaps all of these belonged to Terry's Texas Rangers, although there were engaged a part of Bacot's Alabama Cavalry and some Kentuckians under Maj. Smith.

On the 3d of last September these comrades went to those sacred graves, fixed them as well as they could, and built a fence around them. These faithful comrades are resolved upon annual decorations of all these graves in the spring time. They are anxious to learn what survivors may know of the engagements wherein these hero patriots lost their lives.