A Confederate soldier statue was created in 1926 by United Daughters of the Confederacy Chapter 1236. The idea began with a mention in the Greenville Morning Herald on March 15, 1910, and on August 31, 1922, the park board approved a proposal by the UDC to build it in memory of Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War. Because soldiers did not have dog tags that could be sent to their families, it served as a place for families to commemorate their dead. The original location would have been part of what is now called Graham Park, but that changed over time. Several years were spent raising funds through efforts including a rummage sale, a chapter project of a skirt with 1,000 pockets, and tea parties. North Texas Granite and Marble Works was hired in 1925 to build the monument, and Frank Tetch, a prolific Texas artisan, sculpted it and also supervised the cutting of the granite decorating the Texas capitol and two-thirds of the Confederate memorials in Texas and adjacent states. His other works included the State Fireman's Memorial on the capitol grounds, the bronze statue of La Salle in Navasota, and the mantelpieces for the Driskill Hotel in Austin. A recommendation at the UDC meeting in November 1925 placed the statue on the campus of Greenville High School, with no mention of the earlier proposed site, and that was approved. It stood in front of the high school's main entrance, first on Wesley St. and then on Texas St., until around 1968, when it was moved to Greenville Junior High School, later the 6th grade center, on Stanford Street, where it remained until 2005, when it was moved to the museum. More than 1800 similarly designed soldier statues were placed in communities throughout the South in the late 19th and early 20th century, and Greenville was the only city in Texas to place a Confederate monument on the campus of a public school. Its history rests in its changing location, its artist, and its role as evidence of the past.